A Special Court handling CBI cases on Thursday remanded till February 4 to judicial custody an aide of former Telecom Minister Dayanidhi Maran and two others over misuse of telephone lines at Maran’s residence during his term in office.

Yesterday, the CBI had arrested three persons including V Gowthaman, former additional private secretary to Maran, in connection with alleged allotment of over 300 high-speed telephone lines to Maran’s residence here. The others arrested are Sun TV staffers S Kannan, chief technical officer, and LS Ravi.

The three were produced before the Principal Special Court for the CBI at the Madras High Court.

A CBI release said the arrest is part of the ongoing investigation of a case registered on July 23, 2013, against Maran, former Chief General Manager of Chennai Telephones and others relating to the misuse of telephone lines.

It was alleged that between June 2004 and June 2007 Maran and other officials of BSNL Chennai entered into a criminal conspiracy and caused huge financial loss to the exchequer.

It was further alleged that in 2004-2006 and 2006-2007 two former CGMs of Chennai Telephones, along with other unknown staff of the department, facilitated/provided a number of high-end telecom facilities like ISDN, broadband connections and leased line circuits at the residence of Maran in violation of rules/regulations and in the absence of any express provision of law.

PTI reports

Maran on Thursday charged the CBI with trying “to fix” him to please an RSS leader from Tamil Nadu.

“CBI should be a fact-finding machine and not a fixing one...I am being singled out. The CBI is fixing me to please an RSS ideologue from Tamil Nadu,” a combative Maran told reporters here. He, however, did not name anyone.

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