The Supreme Court on Wednesday found Reliance Communications Ltd. (RCom) and its chairman Anil Ambani and two other group firms guilty of contempt of court, observing that the defendants had adopted a “cavalier attitude” despite the court’s best efforts to “lend a helping hand” to pay off dues worth Rs. 550 crore to Swedish telecommunications equipment major Ericsson. A Bench of Justices Rohinton Nariman and Vineet Saran ordered RCom to “purge” the contempt by paying a balance of Rs. 453 crore of dues to Ericsson within four weeks. If not, Mr. Ambani, along with Reliance Telecom Ltd. (RTL) chairperson Satish Seth and Reliance Infratel Ltd. (RITL) chairperson Chhaya Virani, would each have to serve a sentence of three months’ imprisonment. The court said the three chairpersons had given “conditional” undertakings on behalf of their respective companies in order to “wriggle” out of the commitment to the court. “The undertakings given on the footing that the amount of Rs. 550 crore would be paid only out of the sale of assets was false to the knowledge of the three Reliance companies,” Justice Nariman wrote. “This itself affects the administration of justice, and is, therefore, contempt of court,” the Bench held. Fine of Rs. 1 crore The court also ordered the three companies to pay the Supreme Court registry a fine of Rs. 1 crore each within four weeks. The money would be paid over to the Supreme Court Legal Services Committee. In case of default on payment of the fine, the chairpersons of the three companies would have to spend a month in jail. The Bench, in its 41-page judgment, dismissed the defendants’ unconditional apology for disobeying the court’s orders. It said conditional undertakings given by the three chairpersons on August 9, 2018, to the Supreme Court to pay the Rs. 550 crore amounted to misdemeanour. They gave these undertakings despite the court, in an order dated August 3, having given them leeway of a 120-day-period to pay back Ericsson. It is clear that the three Reliance companies had no intention, at the very least, of adhering to the time limit of 120 days or to the extended time limit of 60 days plus, as was given by way of indulgence, by the order dated October 23, 2018, the court said. Their undertakings had said the money would be paid on condition of the sale of assets of the company. Their action was contrary to earlier unconditional undertakings given by the authorised persons of the three companies to the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) in May last. The Bench ruled that the chairpersons’ undertakings were neither as per the court’s orders nor in accordance with the earlier ones given in the NCLAT. The court also dismissed RCom’s argument that the sale of spectrum to Reliance Jio, led by Mr. Ambani’s elder brother Mukesh Ambani, had failed to fructify because the Department of Telecommunications had refused to give a no-objection certificate. It fell through only because the prospective buyer, Reliance Jio, refused to give the undertaking that if called upon, it would pay the erstwhile debts of the seller of the spectrum, Justice Nariman wrote.