Court reserves order on Behura's bail plea

The special CBI court on Tuesday reserved its order on the bail petition of Siddhartha Behura, former telecom secretary, who has been in jail for over nine months for the 2G spectrum scam.

Behura’s counsel Aman Lekhi argued before the special CBI judge O P Saini that “the principle of parity demands that if the CBI is not opposed to the bail pleas of five accused then they should not oppose the bail pleas of the rest either.”

He went on to add that the prosecution is making distinction among the accused showing that there is political intrusion in the legal process.

He questioned the basis on which CBI was differentiating between the accused who deserved to get bail and those who did not.

Senior public prosecutor U U Lalit said that CBI did not oppose the bail petitions of Kanimozhi along with Sharad Kumar, Kalaignar TV MD, Asif Balwa and Rajeev Agarwal, directors, Kusegaon Foods and Vegetables and Karim Morani, MD, Cineyug Enterprises because they have a ‘vicarious liability’ (or secondary liability) in the case. He said others whose bail pleas were opposed by CBI like Shahid Balwa, Swan Telecom promoter, and R K Chandolia, former personal secretary to A Raja, had individual liability in the case.

“The petitioner in question is influential and can tamper with the evidence,” the CBI counsel said. On defence counsel’s allegation that CBI is ‘holding the brief’ on some accused to not oppose their bail pleas, Lalit replied “I felt that a distinction could be made. There is nothing that I am holding the brief for.....”

Earlier, CBI had not opposed the bail pleas of the five accused on the ground that they were facing a maximum sentence of five years while the others were facing a maximum of seven years of imprisonment.

In case of Behura, after the framing of charges, section 409 was added to his list of charges, increasing the maximum punishment to life imprisonment. Apart from Behura, A Raja also faces section 409 for criminal breach of trust by a public servant.