The Supreme Court has directed its registry to explain why the petition filed by businessman Vijay Mallya, who has sought review of its 2017 order holding him guilty of contempt of court for transferring $40 million to his children, was not listed before the court for the last three years.

A bench of Justices U.U. Lalit and Ashok Bhushan, which took up Mallya’s review petition in-chamber on June 16, directed the apex court registry to furnish all the details, including names of officials who had dealt with the file concerning the review petition for the last three years.

“Before we deal with the submissions raised in the review petition, we direct the registry to explain why the review petition was not listed before the concerned court for the last three years,” the bench said in its June 16 order which was uploaded on the apex court website on Friday.

Taking a strong note of the undue delay in slisting of the review petition, the bench asked the registry to furnish an explanation within two weeks, apparently to examine if there was any deliberate attempt to delay the proceedings.

“The review petition shall, thereafter, be considered on merits. According to the office report on limitation, the review petition was filed in time,” the bench said in its order.

Mallya, who is an accused in a bank loan default case of over Rs 9,000 crore involving his defunct Kingfisher Airlines, is in the United Kingdom.

The apex court’s 2017 order had come on a plea by a consortium of banks led by the State Bank of India (SBI), which had said that Mallya had allegedly transferred $40 million received from British firm Diageo to his children in “flagrant violation” of various judicial orders.