MUMBAI: The Bombay High Court on Friday dismissed a petition seeking a CBI probe against Reliance Industries Limited and its chairman and managing director Mukesh Ambani for alleged unlawful extraction of natural gas from ONGC’s Krishna-Godavari basin fields.
A bench of Chief Justice Shree Chandrashekhar and Justice Suman Shyam refused relief to the petitioner Jitendra Maru who had sought registration of an FIR for the offences of theft, dishonesty, misappropriation and criminal breach of trust.
A copy of the order was not yet available.
As per Maru, RIL allegedly engaged in a “massive organized fraud” from 2004 to 2013 by drilling sideways from its contracted deep-sea wells into the adjacent Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) wells, thus illegally extracting natural gas.
The petition claimed that the ONGC had discovered this alleged unauthorised extraction in 2013 and had reported it to the Government of India.
Maru in his plea relied on an independent investigation conducted by consultants DeGolyer and MacNaughton and also a report submitted by the retired Justice A P Shah Committee which had concluded that RIL had tapped into ONGC’s reserves.