Special CBI court acquits all accused including A Raja and Kanimozhi in 2G case

Team Udayavani, Dec 21, 2017, 2:10 PM IST

New Delhi: A special CBI court on Thursday acquitted all the accused including former Telecom Minister A Raja and DMK chief M Karunanidhi’s daughter Kanimozhi in the multi-crore 2G spectrum allocations cases. Fifteen other accused in the case and three companies were also acquitted.

Others acquitted in the case are former telecom secretary Siddharth Behura, Raja’s erstwhile private secretary R K 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.

Directors of Kusegaon Fruits and Vegetables Pvt Ltd Asif Balwa and Rajiv Agarwal, Kalaignar TV director Sharad Kumar and Bollywood producer Karim Morani are also acquitted in the case. Besides them, three telecom firms — Swan Telecom Pvt Ltd (STPL), Reliance Telecom Ltd and Unitech Wireless (Tamil Nadu) Ltd — were also accused and acquitted in the case.

Special CBI Judge O P Saini pronounced the judgement in the 2G scam which had rocked the UPA government. In its charge sheet filed in April 2011 against Raja and others, the CBI had alleged that there was a loss of Rs 30,984 crore to the exchequer in allocation of 122 licences for 2G spectrum which were scrapped by the Supreme Court on February 2, 2012.

All the accused facing trial in these cases had denied allegations levelled against them by the CBI and the ED. The court’s verdict came more than eight years after the CBI filed an FIR against “unknown persons” and began its investigations following a recommendation by the Central Vigilance Commission.