In a major embarrassment to the CBI, a Delhi court today dismissed its plea to close a decade-old alleged telecom fraud case to the tune of Rs800 crore against 19 people.
In a major embarrassment to the CBI, a Delhi court today dismissed its plea to close a decade-old alleged telecom fraud case to the tune of Rs800 crore against 19 people and ordered a fresh probe saying there seemed to be prima facie a strong case against the accused.
"It seemed there was prima facie a strong case was made out against the accused", Special CBI Judge O P Saini said, rejecting the closure report by CBI which argued it lacked sufficient evidence to prosecute them.
The court, after perusing the objection application of Anil Kumar, secretary of NGO Telecom Watchdog against the CBI's closure report, concluded the fresh probe was required to unravel the case.
The agency, which had earlier allegedly favoured prosecution of 19 people, including MTNL's then CMD R SP Sinha, P Singh, former general manager of MTNL and the country head of Motorola, later moved the court for closing the case.
The agency's bid faced legal hurdle after Anil Kumar filed his objection, through his lawyer VK Ohri, to the closure report following the Delhi High Court's direction to approach the lower court.
Earlier, the court had rejected CBI's plea that Anil Kumar had no "locus standi" to oppose its move and allowed him to file his objection.
The alleged fraud relates to payments made against tender agreement with M/s Motorola India Ltd for establishing of CDMA-based WLL service (commonly known as "Garuda") for the state-owned MTNL in 1999. The MTNL had invited tender in 1999 for its limited mobile services for 150,000 lines, to be implemented in three phases. Motorola was allegedly paid money at the behest telecom officials despite several deficiencies in the project.
CBI had filed the final report on May 25. The reasons given by CBI for closure of the case were completely false and contradicted its own findings, Ohri had said. A case was registered on September 27, 2003, under various provisions of the IPC and the Prevention of Corruption Act following the seizure of Rs 50 lakh from an office of M/s United Telecom Ltd here during an IT raid.
CBI, which found prima facie evidence to investigate roles of the officials and others, had sought approval from the competent authorities to prosecute them, Ohri said, adding "now the same CBI is saying that it had no evidence to prosecute them."
The MTNL officials had allegedly connived with the private telecom major by continuing with the CDMA project despite the fact that its earlier projects had "inherent technical deficiencies".
"Even objection from the MTNL Board was ignored and payment was released in favour of Motorola ... the private company could not complete the project on time and it caused loss to MTNL to the tune of Rs174 crore," Ohri said.
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