The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to examine a plea for early listing of a PIL seeking a court-monitored probe into alleged large-scale bank fraud by Anil Ambani’s Reliance Communications Ltd, some of its promoters and officials of several public sector banks that may have left the government exchequer poorer by ₹20,000 crore.

Chief Justice of India B.R. Gavai said “we will list it” when advocate Prashant Bhushan, representing petitioner and former Union secretary E.A.S Sarma, sought early hearing on the ground that the investigations into some of the allegations should not be limited to the narrow scope of an FIR and related probes by the Enforcement Directorate. Bhushan said the probe should include all grave offences revealed in various reports and documents available in the public domain. The case is being simultaneously investigated by the CBI.

According to the petition, the investigating agencies have overlooked the five-year delay in State Bank of India filing an FIR, which the plea said indicated the involvement of bank officials and other public servants whose conduct enabled, concealed or facilitated the fraud.

“Despite being in possession of the 2020 Forensic Audit Report, based on which the complaint was filed which contains detailed issues regarding diversion, evergreening, fictitious transactions, and use of shell entities, the bank chose to take no statutory action until August 2025, a delay that cannot be explained without examining whether officers acted in collusion or with deliberate intent to shield the borrower group,” the petition said.

“The CBI and the ED, however, have entirely failed to investigate this institutional angle, thereby excluding from scrutiny the very public officials whose complicity or wilful inaction forms an essential part of the criminal conspiracy," it added.