Shocking verdict

In a surprising verdict, a Special CBI court on Thursday acquitted all the accused, including former Telecom Minister A Raja and DMK MP Kanimozhi and telecom company owners in the infamous 2G scam.

The judge acquitted them in all three separate cases lodged by the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate.

Terming the CBI chargesheets as a “well choreographed” one,  Special Judge OP Saini said the CBI’s evidences were incorrect facts which miserably failed to prove charges against the accused in 2G spectrum case. Reacting to the acquittal, the CBI and the ED said they would appeal against the judgments.

At the end of his 1,500 pages order, Saini said, “I  have absolutely no hesitation in holding that the prosecution (CBI) has miserably failed to prove any charge against any of the accused, made in its well choreographed charge sheet.”

The fifteen other accused allowed to walk free include former Telecom Secretary Siddharth Behura, Raja’s erstwhile private secretary RK Chandolia, Swan Telecom promoters Shahid Usman Balwa and Vinod Goenka, Unitech Ltd MD Sanjay Chandra and three top executives of Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (RADAG) — Gautam Doshi, Surendra Pipara and Hari Nair.

Saini, whose court came into being on March 14, 2011 for hearing 2G cases exclusively, also acquitted Essar Group promoters Ravi Kant Ruia and Anshuman Ruia and six others in a separate case arising out of the 2G scam probe. Besides Ruias, Loop Telecom Promoters IP Khaitan and Kiran Khaitan and Vikash Saraf, one of the Essar Group Directors, Loop Telecom Ltd, Loop Mobile (India) Ltd and Essar Teleholdings Ltd also were acquitted.

The CBI had alleged that there was a loss of Rs 30,984 crore to the exchequer in allocation of licences for the 2G spectrum which were scrapped by the top court on February 2, 2012. Raja and Kanimozhi, daughter of DMK supremo M Karunanidhi, were also let off in another case lodged by the ED under the money laundering law arising out of the 2G scam.

In its chargesheet, the ED had also named DMK supremo M Karunanidhi’s wife Dayalu Ammal as an accused in the case in which it had alleged that Rs 200 crore was paid by Swan Telecom (P) Ltd (STPL) promoters to DMK-run Kalaignar TV. Along with them, 16 others, including Shahid Balwa and Vinod Goenka of STPL, Asif Balwa and Rajiv Aggarwal of Kusegaon Fruits and Vegetables Pvt Ltd, film producer Karim Morani, P Amirtham and Sharad Kumar, Director of Kalaignar TV, were also acquitted in the money laundering case.

But the court’s verdict left many question unanswered. The judge did not pay much significance to  nearly Rs 200  crore transferred to DMK-controlled Kalaignar TV by some of the accused persons and companies. He dismissed the transaction saying none of the accused persons claimed that it was part  of illegal gratification in lieu of alleged favour granted to them by Raja.

The Judge also find no illegality in the Raja’s decision  to advance the cutoff date for receiving application for grant of licences from October 1, 2007 to September 25.  Though the DoT gave just one hour for the applicants to submit their bids, leading to a chaos and scuffle,  Judge Saini justified the decision. He also took no notice of the fact the  one-hour time, without any prior notice was too short for any bidder to procure a bank draft ranging from Rs 200 crore to Rs 500 crore.  

Brushing aside this damning accusation against Raja, Saini  went on to justify the decision, saying, “A non­serious player, who had no financial resources, would block the way of a serious player by claiming early mover advantage. This was the main disadvantage of determining seniority by date of application, and as such, it was injurious to the interest of serious players, who had the financial resources to execute the telecom project.”

Judge Saini also said whenever  an officer wanted to delay an application, “he would wrap it up in the mantle of first­come first­served, that is, unless earlier application was disposed of, the next will have to wait despite no fault of his own”.

He said change of criteria was a facilitating innovation.

The judge also seemed to be impressed  by the allegations made by the accused persons  against prime witness Aseervadam Achary about his political motives.   The court rubbished his testimony saying, “He was a man with political testimony and used to think of joining political party.”

During the trial, the accused persons had taken this stand to “vilify’ Achary without producing any evidence to substantiate  their charges.

After the trial court verdict, the fate of the 122 telecom licences of eight operators that were cancelled in 2012 will be decided based on the investigative agencies’ take on acquittal of all the accused in the 2G spectrum case, Telecom Minister Manoj Sinha said on Thursday. The investigative agencies will decide on appealing against the lower court verdict, he added.

The 2001 ‘first-come-first-serve’ policy was altered to ‘first-come-first-pay’ in 2008, he said, reacting to the court verdict.

Shares of companies linked to the 2G spectrum allocation case surged up to 20 per cent today after a special court acquitted all the accused.     D B Realty zoomed 19.89 per cent to end at Rs 43.70 -- its highest  trading permissible limit for the day -- on BSE.     Shares of Unitech soared 11.86 per cent to close at Rs 7.92, Sun TV Network went up by 4.51 per cent to Rs 982.10, Reliance Communications rose by 4.05 per cent to Rs 17.97 and Essar Shipping gained 2.15 per cent to Rs 28.