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This is an archive article published on December 23, 2017

Prosecution failed, doesn’t mean no case: Judge who shot down 2G award

“Kindly read the judgment as a whole. Trial court has said prosecution has failed to adduce any evidence to prove the allegations. That’s all,” Justice Singhvi told The Indian Express Friday.

The bench said “material produced before the court shows that the Minister of C&IT (Communications and Information Technology) wanted to favour some companies at the cost of the public exchequer…”.

A day after a special court acquitted UPA telecom minister A Raja, his DMK colleague and MP Kanimozhi and 15 others in a case relating to alleged irregularities in the allocation of 2G spectrum in 2008, former Supreme Court judge G S Singhvi, who authored the February 2012 apex court judgment cancelling telecom licences and the allotted spectrum, said the trial court order did not mean there was no case at all, but only that the prosecution had not been able to prove the charges.

“Kindly read the judgment as a whole. Trial court has said prosecution has failed to adduce any evidence to prove the allegations. That’s all,” Justice Singhvi told The Indian Express Friday.

“There are two things in criminal law. One, no case at all; and second, no evidence. In this case, as per press reports, there is no evidence… If somebody commits a crime but no evidence is produced, the person can’t be convicted,” he said.

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Express explained | Decoding the 2G spectrum verdict: Charge by charge, how the case collapsed

In 2012, cancelling the licences allotted during Raja’s tenure as minister, the bench of Justices Singhvi and A K Ganguly had ruled that “the exercise undertaken by the officers of the DoT (Department of Telecom) between September 2007 and March 2008, under the leadership of the then Minister of C&IT, was wholly arbitrary, capricious and contrary to public interest apart from being violative of the doctrine of equality.”

The bench said “material produced before the court shows that the Minister of C&IT (Communications and Information Technology) wanted to favour some companies at the cost of the public exchequer…”.

On this, Justice Singhvi said the issue before the Supreme Court was “entirely different”. The issue before the apex court, he said, was that of legality of the spectrum allocation process, while that before the trial court was one of criminality. He declined to comment on the zero-loss theory, merely saying that the then government had said that the spectrum auction had fetched Rs 60,000 crore.

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On Thursday, the court of judge O P Saini acquitted the 17 accused in the case, including Raja and Kanimozhi, saying there was “nil evidence on record” and pulled up the CBI for not doing its prosecution homework.

Ananthakrishnan G. is a Senior Assistant Editor with The Indian Express. He has been in the field for over 23 years, kicking off his journalism career as a freelancer in the late nineties with bylines in The Hindu. A graduate in law, he practised in the District judiciary in Kerala for about two years before switching to journalism. His first permanent assignment was with The Press Trust of India in Delhi where he was assigned to cover the lower courts and various commissions of inquiry. He reported from the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court of India during his first stint with The Indian Express in 2005-2006. Currently, in his second stint with The Indian Express, he reports from the Supreme Court and writes on topics related to law and the administration of justice. Legal reporting is his forte though he has extensive experience in political and community reporting too, having spent a decade as Kerala state correspondent, The Times of India and The Telegraph. He is a stickler for facts and has several impactful stories to his credit. ... Read More

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