Court to consider charge sheet in telecom scam in NDA regime

A Delhi court is likely to take up for cognisance tomorrow the charge sheet filed against Airtel, Vodafone and others for alleged irregularities in allocation of additional spectrum to them during the NDA regime.

Special CBI Judge OP Saini had on January 14 fixed for tomorrow to consider taking cognisance of the CBI charge sheet filed on December 21 last year in which former telecom secretary Shyamal Ghosh has been named as an accused.

The CBI has also named three telecom companies -- Bharti Cellular Ltd, Hutchison Max Pvt Ltd (now known as Vodafone India Ltd) and Sterling Cellular Ltd (now known as Vodafone Mobile Service Ltd) -- as accused in the case in which the Department of Telecom (DoT) had allegedly allocated additional spectrum resulting in a loss of Rs846 crore to the exchequer.

In the 57-page charge sheet, the CBI has booked all the accused for the offences of criminal conspiracy (120-B) of the IPC and under provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act.

The court had earlier fixed January 14 to consider on taking cognisance on the charge sheet but it had deferred the order on the issue after the CBI had submitted that they need over two weeks more to file some more documents before it.

CBI prosecutor AK Singh had told the court that they had filed all the documents relied upon by the agency but they need two weeks more to file some "unrelied documents" which are in agency's possession.

The court had allowed CBI's plea for placing before it the unrelied documents and had fixed the matter for January 30.

The CBI has not named Jagdish Rai Gupta, a former deputy director general (VAS) cell of DoT and a former Director of BSNL, who was named in the FIR, as accused in the case saying "no evidence attributing any criminality on his part or his involvement in the alleged offence has surfaced during the investigation."