2G spectrum case: ED moves Delhi HC against acquittal of A Raja, Kanimozhi

Special judge O P Saini, while pulling up the CBI for “remaining silent” and “filing a well-choreographed chargesheet” and noting that the prosecutor had made it out to be a “case of high political corruption”, said: “I have endeavoured hard to persuade myself to take an expansive and liberal view of the prosecution case. However, in view of deficient, or I may say nil evidence on record, I find myself unimpressed and unmoved, whatever may be the nature of the case. High profile nature of a case cannot be used as a ground for holding people guilty without legal evidence.”

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The alleged scam came into prominence in 2010 when the then Comptroller and Auditor General Vinod Rai alleged 122 2G licences were given to telecom operators at throwaway prices without a free and fair bidding process, causing a loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore to the national exchequer. The licences were scrapped by the Supreme Court on February 2, 2012.

In a veiled reference to the presumptive loss to the exchequer in the grant of 2G licences, Saini had said “some people created a scam by artfully arranging a few selected facts and exaggerating things beyond recognition to astronomical levels” and “a huge scam was seen by everyone where there was none”.