Mumbai, March 27 The Bombay High Court on Friday dismissed a petition seeking a CBI investigation against Reliance Industries Limited and its chairman and managing director Mukesh Ambani for alleged illegal extraction of natural gas from ONGC's Krishna-Godavari basin fields.
A bench of Chief Justice Shree Chandrashekhar and Justice Suman Shyam refused to grant relief to the petitioner Jitendra Maru, who had sought the registration of an FIR for offenses of theft, dishonesty, misappropriation, and criminal breach of trust.
A copy of the order was not yet available.
According to Maru, RIL allegedly engaged in a "massive organized fraud" from 2004 to 2013 by drilling into adjacent wells of the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), thus illegally extracting natural gas.
The petition claimed that ONGC had discovered this alleged unauthorized 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, as well as a report submitted by the retired Justice A P Shah Committee, which concluded that RIL had tapped into ONGC's reserves.