On Friday (22 March 2024), the Delhi High Court accepted the appeal filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) challenging the acquittal of A Raja, K Kanimozhi, and 15 other notable figures, including politicians, businessmen, and bureaucrats, in the 2G spectrum allocation cases.
Justice Dinesh Kumar Sharma granted the CBI “leave to appeal” against the trial court’s decision to acquit the 17 accused in the 2G case. Leave to appeal refers to formal permission granted by a court allowing a party to contest a decision before a higher court.
In his statement, Justice Sharma expressed that upon reviewing the evidence and submissions, he believes a prima facie case exists that warrants further examination of the evidence. He indicated that there is sufficient ground to consider converting the leave to appeal into a regular appeal.
After a prolonged legal process spanning six years and 125 court listings, the plea’s verdict was finally reserved on March 14, 2024. The case underwent hearings before seven different judges before reaching Justice Sharma.
The Special CBI Court at Patiala House had previously acquitted Raja, Kanimozhi, and the other accused in December 2017. According to the CBI’s allegations, Raja, who served as the Union Telecom Minister during the UPA regime, caused significant losses to the state treasury by undervaluing telecom firms for frequency licenses, with an estimated loss of ₹1.76 trillion as per the Comptroller and Auditor General of India.
Among the other accused are former Telecom Secretary Siddharth Behura, Raja’s former private secretary RK Chandolia, Swan Telecom promoters Shahid Usman Balwa and Vinod Goenka, Unitech Managing Director D Sanjay Chandra, and three high-ranking executives of Anil Ambani’s Reliance Group – Gautam Doshi, Surendra Pipara, and Hari Nair.
In February 2012, the Supreme Court nullified 122 telecom licenses and spectrum allocations to nine companies, citing procedural flaws in the allocation process.
The CBI lodged its leave to appeal plea with the High Court in March 2018, contesting the acquittal of all the accused. The plea was first heard on March 21, 2018, with Senior Special Public Prosecutor (SPP) Sanjay Jain presenting the case for the CBI before the High Court.
(With inputs from Bar & Bench)
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