It is often said that the wheels of justice grind slowly but surely, but in the case of the CBI raids on former communications minister A. Raja, and on bureaucrats and businessmen known to be close to him, there is a lot of scepticism on the “surely” bit. One really wonders what kind of incriminating documents the CBI sleuths had hoped to discover one year after the agency filed a case against “unknown officials” of the department of telecom and some private individuals and firms in the 2G scam case. The reference to “unknown” persons was itself a farce as the suspects were known by name — it was almost like a distortion of the investigation. There was not a word about the minister himself in that case even though he was the centrepiece of the entire controversy on irregularities in the distribution of spectrum in 2008. It was almost like re-enacting Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark. Spectrum (or airwaves) is an extremely scarce commodity, and thus it is treated the world over as something precious which is not to be frittered away. In this case, of course, it was given out of turn for a song — causing, according to the Comptroller and Auditor-General, a revenue loss of `1.75 lakh crores. Also, some beneficiaries got more than the allocated quota of spectrum and till now are refusing to either pay for it or surrender it despite the authorities demanding its return. In some cases the parties used their clout with the minister or the government to corner spectrum and later sold it to third parties for a fat profit.
The scepticism over the efficacy of the CBI’s much-hyped raids this week is the complete absence of any element of surprise. A raid is meaningless in such circumstances. (As one wag put it, if someone had still left a trail for the CBI to follow, it would be evidence of sheer incompetence, on top of everything else!) But having said that, the raids can’t be totally discounted either: one reason why the CBI felt compelled to carry them out were the repeated queries from the Supreme Court on why it had not interrogated the former minister. With the court monitoring developments in the case, the CBI will have to report its findings to the court. It is now in the process of tracing the money trail. The agency appears to be on the right track with its raid on Greenhouse Promoters, whose head Sadhick Batcha is known to be close to Mr Raja and is allegedly one of the persons who laundered Mr Raja’s money. There are said to be several such firms. It is suspected that some of the money linked to the scam might have been handled by such companies. Mr Raja’s wife was a director on the Greenhouse board, and resigned only recently. Mr Batcha will have to account for this money — and this could well eventually lead the CBI to the culprits. There is suspicion that money may have changed hands, but very little evidence. But if the CBI, which has access to the bank records of all the parties involved, can establish how and in what direction the money flowed, there can be progress in its investigation. Like human beings, large amounts of cash leave indelible footprints. Like hawala “chits” that change hands when money is sent into or out of the country, movement of people or of currency can be detected by the monitoring of emails, mobile text messages and cellphone calls. However, the real danger is that with the investigation starting so late, people with something to hide have had ample time to get rid of all the physical and forensic evidence that could nail them.