HC issues notice to CBI as Reliance says drop charges

Justice Mukta Gupta issued notice to the CBI,seeking its reply within four weeks,and slated it for hearing on January 12 next year.

The Delhi High Court on Monday sought response of the CBI on a plea by the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Groups Reliance Telecom Limited (RTL) seeking to get quashed the charges framed against it by a CBI court in the 2G spectrum case.

Justice Mukta Gupta issued notice to the CBI,seeking its reply within four weeks,and slated it for hearing on January 12 next year.

The court,however,dismissed the companys plea to issue notices to the Union Ministry of Law and Justice,Department of Telecom (DoT) and Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) as well,saying there appeared no reasons to accede to this request at this juncture.

RTL had sought making the Law Ministry a party to its petition on the contention that the ministrys report clarifying the meaning of the term associate of a commercial firm was neglected by the CBI and even the trial court failed to consider it at the stage of framing of charges against it.

RTL had moved the High Court last week challenging the trial courts decision to put it on trial,saying it never held stakes in excess of 9.9 per cent in Swan Telecom and that too was divested prior to the grant of licences in 2008.

Appearing for RTL,senior counsel N K Kaul referred to a Law Ministry report sent to the DoT defining the term associate of a firm and purportedly saying the 2G spectrum allocation scam beneficiary Swan Telecom was not an associate of RTL.

Kaul argued that the report was deliberately neglected by the CBI and the trial court too had not considered it while framing the charges only because the agency had contended that the report was unsolicited. We are dealing with high offices. CBI cannot pick and choose. CBI says it is unsolicited opinion and the court does not look into it. It is not a case of simple ignorance of a document, he said. Am I not entitled to ask the Law Ministry whether it is a solicited report or not?

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The court,however,preferred not to dwell on the issue at this stage and noted that the impugned report was already on the trial courts record for consideration.

The trial court had framed charges against RTL and 16 others,including A Raja and DMK MP Kanimozhi. The trial court had found prima facie evidence to put RTL on trial under sections 109 (abetment),120B (criminal conspiracy) and 409 (criminal breach of trust) of the IPC,noting that co-accused Shahid Usman Balwa-led Swan Telecom was just a mask for RTL.