2G scam: Bail plea of five corporate honchos to be decided tomorrow

Wednesday, 20 April 2011, 08:44 IST
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New Delhi: A special court is likely to pronounce its order tomorrow on the bail plea of five corporate honchos, who have not been arrested despite being named in the chargesheet in the 2G spectrum scam. Special CBI Judge O P Saini, on April 15, had reserved his order on the bail applications of Swan Telecom Director Vinod Goenka, Unitech Wireless (Tamil Nadu) Ltd Managing Director Sanjay Chandra, and three top officials of Reliance ADA Group Gautam Doshi, Surendra Pipara and Hari Nair. The five top corporate leaders, who had appeared after being named in the first chargesheet of the case, were not arrested by the CBI during the probe. Besides them, former Telecom Minister A Raja, Swan Telecom promoter Shahid Usman Balwa, former telecom secretary Siddhartha Behura and Raja's personal secretary R K Chandolia are other accused who are in jail. Opposing the bail plea of the corporate leaders, special prosecutor U U Lalit had said that they should be sent to jail as the fear of witnesses being won over or influenced is there. "The severity of the offence cannot be determined by the length of the prescribed punishment. The financial health of the country has been completely bartered in this case and the accused should be remanded to judicial custody for smooth trial," Lalit had said. However, senior advocates K T S Tulsi, Mukul Rohatgi and Ranjit Kumar, arguing for corporate leaders, had said that sending the accused, whose arrest was not required during the probe, to jail now would amount to "travesty of justice" and was an "astounding proposition" of law.
Source: PTI