Tanvi Sinha
The hearing for the 2G spectrum case starts afresh with CBI commencing their arguments against the acquittal of the former Telecom Minister A. Raja in Delhi High Court on January 12th 2021.
A single-judge bench of Justice Yogesh Khanna heard the arguments for a brief time over video conferencing before the proceedings were stopped due to connectivity issues.
Advocate Vijay Aggarwal appearing for persons who were acquitted in the case said that the final arguments of the accused spanning 6,500 pages were not digitally made available to him.
CBI started its argument against acquittal once again as the judge had changed regarding the leave to appeal, referring to formal permission that was given by a court so as to appeal to a higher court.
The change of judges happened in light of the retirement of Justice Brijesh Sethi, the judge assigned earlier to the case, in November 2020.
The Special Court had on December 2017 acquitted Raja, DMK MP Kanimozhi, former telecom secretary Siddharth Behura, Raja’s private secretary RK Chandolia, Unitech LTD MD Sanjay Chandra, and three RADAG top executives.
This wasn’t even the end of it as the court acquitted Shahid Balwa and Vinod Goenka of Swan Telecom and Asif Balwa, and Rajiv Agarwal, directors of Kusegaon Fruits and Vegetables Pvt ltd along with the companies behind them as well.
On the same day, the same court further acquitted Essar Group promoted Ravi Kant Ruia and Anshuman Ruia and Loop Telecom promoters IP Khaitan and Kiran Khaitan who were involved in a separate case relating to the same scam.
In response to the acquittals, CBI and ED had pushed the High Court on March 19, 2018, and March 20th, 2018 respectively, challenging the special court’s order of acquittal.