Supreme Court refuses to halt ongoing trial in 2G spectrum cases

The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to stay the trial of 2G spectrum allocation scam cases before a special court during the pendency of a bunch of petitions before it seeking quashing of charges against the accused. "What we have not done earlier we won't do now," a bench comprising justices H L Dattu and S A Bobde said as senior advocate Ram Jethmalani, appearing for former telecom minister A Raja, made a plea to halt the ongoing trial.

The bench, which was also seized with the petitions of other accused persons and companies like Reliance Telecom Ltd and Essar Teleholdings Ltd said it will hear all the matters on October 29.
It also issued notices and sought response in two weeks from the CBI and its Director Ranjit Sinha on Raja's plea seeking copies of documents filed in sealed cover relating to the agency's top boss' alleged role in scuttling the probe in the 2G cases.

The documents also included the entry register, allegedly containing names of some of the accused in the 2G case, submitted before the apex court. Senior advocate Harish Salve apprised the bench about the charges against Reliance Telecom and Essar Teleholdings Ltd. He said Reliance Telecom has challenged the framing of charges against it by raising the clause 8 of Unified Access Service Licences that an applicant should not have more than 10 per cent stake in the company at the stage of grant of licence and not at the stage of applying for it.

He said the case against Essar was piquant as CBI probe in the 2G scam found that no case of corruption under the Prevention of Corruption Act was made out and they were only booked for the offence of cheating under the IPC. However, the objection of Essar and its executives that they were not liable to be tried by the special court was rejected.