2G case conspiracy began after Raja became minister: Court
The conspiracy to allocate 2G spectrum to ineligible telecom operators for illegal graft began after A. Raja became Minister for Telecommunication and Information Technology, said a Delhi court on Saturday while putting him on trial along with 16 others, including DMK MP Kanimozhi.
"The conspiracy started after accused A. Raja became Minister of Communications and IT on May 16 and its physical manifestation started becoming clear in August-September 2007 on receipt of TRAI recommendations dated August 28, 2007," said Special Judge O. P. Saini who rejected the defence counsels' contention that there was no conspiracy at all. "...the conspiracy continued till the last tranche of money, Rs50 crore, was received by Kalaignar TV on August 7, 2009, as illegal gratification," the judge added.
The court said all the accused in the case knew each other from the beginning, much before the plotting began.
"Accused A Raja was the Telecom Minister from DMK party and M/s Kalaignar TV Pvt Ltd was allegedly run by its affiliates," the court said.
"The allegations and the evidence on record prima facie suggest that this amount of Rs200 crore was meant as bribe for accused A. Raja in consideration of issuance of Letters of Intents for allocation of Unified Access Services Licence and allocation of spectrum to Swan Telecom, which was ultimately received by Kalaignar TV," it added.
"...the submission made by accused persons that there is no evidence about existence of any criminal conspiracy is contrary to the record," the judge said.
The court gave the period of conspiracy while brushing aside defence counsel's argument that CBI's failure to mention it in its chargesheet caused prejudice to the accused. Rejecting arguments that the main conspiracy ended with the grant of UAS licences and allocation of spectrum, the court said payment of bribe is a logical consequence of grant of UAS licences and allocation of spectrum to the two accused companies and these cannot be separated.
"The gist of the conspiracy was to illegally grant LoIs, UAS licences and spectrum to these companies (Swan Telecom and Unitech Wireless) and to pay and receive bribe in lieu thereof and the conspiracy ended with the payment of last tranche of bribe amount of Rs 50 crore on August 7, 2009," it said.
The court also rejected the contention that there may be, if at all, a ‘different set of conspiracy’ as former Telecom Secretary Siddharth Behura joined DoT on January 1, 2008, while RTL executives Gautam Doshi, Hari Nair and Surendra Pipara transferred Swan Telecom to Shahid Balwa and Vinod Goenka in October 2007.
The court rejected the argument saying it was not necessary for all conspirators to be a part of the plot since its very beginning and remain its part till its end and that they need not enter into one single agreement. The court also rejected their contention that all accused could not enter into a conspiracy since they did not know each other.
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