Additional spectrum case: Court discharges Bharti, Vodafone, ex-telecom secy

Judge says CBI charge sheet fabricated

In a major relief to Bharti Airtel (earlier known as Bharti Cellular) and Vodafone India (earlier known as Hutchison Max & Sterling Cellular), a special 2G court on Thursday quashed the charge sheet filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) against the telecom companies in the 2002 additional spectrum scam case.

Special CBI Judge OP Saini observed the investigative agency had filed a "false and fabricated" charge sheet against the accused companies and ex-telecom Secretary Shyamal Ghosh. Discharging the accused, the court directed CBI Director Anil Sinha to conduct an inquiry against the "erring officials" for filing such a charge sheet in the case.

"I am reading out the last paragraph of the order. It's a false and fabricated charge sheet and there is no incriminating evidence against any of the accused so they are discharged. The charge sheet is full of distorted facts and an attempt has been made to mislead the court," the judge said.

The "CBI Director is directed to make an inquiry against erring officials", the court said.

In December 2012, the CBI had filed a charge sheet against Ghosh and three telecom firms -- Hutchison Max (P) Ltd, Sterling Cellular Ltd and Bharti Cellular Ltd for alleged irregularities in allocation of excess spectrum that had allegedly caused a loss of Rs 846.44 crore to the exchequer and corresponding gain to the telecom companies. All the accused were charged with alleged offence of criminal conspiracy (section 120-B) of the IPC and under provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act.

This was the first in the 2G spectrum allocation case where the role of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government came under scrutiny. The telecom minister in 2002 was Pramod Mahajan, who was killed in 2006. The additional spectrum was was allotted to Bharti Airtel for Delhi region and Vodafone India for Delhi and Mumbai region in July 2002.

During the investigation, CBI had found irregular allocation of additional spectrum beyond 6.2 MHz to 10 MHz to GSM operators including Bharti and Vodafone, at minimal incremental revenue share. The agency has alleged favouritism and arbitrariness by some officers in the DoT (department of telecom), bypassing the opinions of the member (finance), the wireless adviser and even the highest decision-making body in the DoT, the Telecom Commission. The CBI had filed a case in November 2011.

Ghosh had countered CBI's arguments saying private firms were not the only beneficiaries of surplus radio waves, but state-run MTNL and BSNL had also benefited.

He had contended that it cannot be said that allocation was done primarily to benefit private companies and asserted that he had not abused his official position in any manner.

Similarly, the accused firms had also countered CBI's loss to the exchequer theory, saying they were allotted "spare radio waves" which would have caused gain to the government.