The CBI on Wednesday questioned former deputy director-general (access services) in the department of telecommunications (DoT), A.K. Srivastava in connection with its probe into the 2G spectrum scam.
According to sources Mr Srivastava was close to former telecom minister A. Raja. The CBI officials questioned Mr Srivastava for nearly four hours. The CBI recently questioned former chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, Pradeep Baijal also in connection with the probe into SG spectrum case.
Sources said, “After completing the questioning of Mr Srivastava, the agency will start questioning several other senior officials of the DoT. There is a possibility that some of the retired officials of DoT will also be questioned by the CBI.”
“Certain DoT officials allegedly granted unified access services licences to a few selected companies at nominal rate by rejecting the applications of the others without any valid reasons thereby causing wrongful loss to the government and corresponding wrongful gain to private persons or companies.” The licences were awarded to certain companies by putting a cap on the number of applicants against the recommendations of the Trai, sources added. The agency is also analysing transcripts relating to 5,000 calls (out of which 3,800 have been analysed), 6,000 files and 80,000 pages of documents recovered during its raids in 2009. All these are being scrutinised, sources said.
The CBI had conducted nationwide raids at the offices of the Telecom ministry and several private companies.