Raja, key accused in 2G spectrum case presented in court
New Delhi, April 13 (IANS) Former telecom Minister A. Raja and eight others were presented in a city court here Wednesday in connection with the alleged scam in the allocation of second generation (2G) telecom spectrum.
Among them, Raja, his personal aid R.K. Chandolia, former telecom secretary Siddhartha Behura, and Swan Telecom promoter Shahid Balwa are already in judicial custody to be presented.
Apart from them, Vinod Goenka of Swan Telecom, Sanjay Chandra of Unitech, and three officials of Reliance Anil Dhirubhani Ambani group -- Gautam Doshi, Hari Nair and Surendra Pipara were also presented before the court.
Three companies - Unitech, Swan Telecom and Reliance Telecom - have also been named in the formal charges filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) April 2 before the special court of the probe agency presided over by Judge O.P. Saini.
Raja and his team of men from the Department of Telecom (DoT) face charges of conspiracy. The former minister also faces forgery charges. Chandolia and Behura have been accused of misusing official position.
A leader of Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, Raja resigned Nov 14 as telecom minister after it came to light that the official auditor had held that his policy on spectrum allocation had resulted in a loss of several billion dollars to
the exchequer.
He was arrested by the probe agency in the national capital Feb 2, along with Behura and Chandolia, while Balwa was arrested from Pune on Feb 8.