By S Venkat Narayan Our Special Correspondent
NEW DELHI, November 3: A Delhi court today dismissed the bail pleas of Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) Chief Muthuvel Karunanidhi’s daughter and Lok Sabha Member Kanimozhi as well as those of seven others in India’s biggest corruption scandal, the sensational multibillion-dollar bribery scam known as 2G (Second Generation) spectrum allocation case.
This is the fourth time the bail pleas of the accused were rejected. The 43-year-old Kanimozhi, languishing in jail since May, wept in the court after Special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Judge OP Saini dismissed the bail pleas. saying the charges levelled against them are of a “very serious nature.”
He was specially appointed by the Supreme Court to ensure speedy trial after Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh’s government appeared to drag its feet and reluctant to act. The DMK is a partner in the federal government of the Congress Party-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA). The government kept insisting that the massive loss is only notional. It was then that the apex court got into the act, and appointed a special judge to deal with the case.
The others whose bail petitions were dismissed are: former Telecom Secretary Siddharth Behura, former
Telecom Minister Andimuthu Raja’s erstwhile Private Secretary RK Chandolia, Swan Telecom promoter Shahid Usman Balwa, Kalaignar TV Managing Director Sharad Kumar, Kusegaon Fruits & Vegetables directors Asif Balwa and Rajiv Agarwal, and Bollywood filmmaker Karim Morani.
“The facts of the case as well as the charges levelled against the accused are of very serious nature having grave implications for the economy of the country,” the court said.
“I am satisfied that no case for bail is made out for any of the applicants/accused,” it said.
While dismissing Kanimozhi’s bail application, the court said, “By no stretch of imagination she can be said to be suffering from any discrimination on ground of being a woman.”
Brushing aside Kanimozhi’s plea for bail under Section 437 of the Criminal Procedure Code on grounds of being a woman, the court said, “Accused Kanimozhi Karunanithi belongs to upper echelons of society, and is also a Member of Parliament. By no stretch of imagination, she can be said to be suffering from any discrimination on the ground of being a woman.”
Special Judge Saini dismissed her bail application, along with those of four others—Sharad Kumar, Morani, Asif Balwa and Rajiv Agarwal— even though CBI had no objection to their release on the ground that they face trial for offences, entailing a maximum jail term of only five years, if convicted.
The court rejected CBI’s stand saying, “There is no distinction between the accused charged on the basis of main charge sheet and supplementary charge sheet. There is only one charge sheet in the eyes of law.”
The court also dismissed the pleas of various accused for bail on the ground that they had been languishing in jail for over five to nine months, while the trial was unlikely to conclude in near future.
“It is repeatedly submitted that these reasons make out good ground for bail to the accused. I have bestowed my careful and anxious consideration to these submissions. In the facts and circumstances of a particular case, these factors may be relevant consideration but in some cases it may not be so,” Saini said.
The court said after framing of charges under “a more serious” section of 409 IPC (criminal breach of trust) which carries life imprisonment as maximum punishment, “there is no favourable change in the case of the accused.”
Rejecting the bail petitions of various 2G case accused, the court said after framing of charges, the legal situation for them has only worsened.
“I find that after framing of charges, the case has crystallised against the accused persons in clear terms, though prima facie and as such, it has moved to a higher pedestal that is, from the stage of suspicion or grave suspicion, it has reached the higher stage of prima facie acceptability.”
The CBI had chargesheeted Kanimozhi on April 25, for her alleged role in the 2G spectrum allocation scam. It had indicted her for taking a bribe to the tune of two billion Indian rupees, which was routed to Kalaignar TV, in which she has 20 per cent stake, and her step mother Dayalu Ammal 60 percent, and Kumar the remaining 20 per cent.
The money was routed to the TV channel by DB Realty of Shahid Usman Balwa, who was one of the beneficiaries of the 2G spectrum allocation scam, with his another firm, Swan Telecom, securing the 2G spectrum licence during the tenure of former Telecom Minister Andimuthu Raja, a DMK Lok Sabha member.
Raja has been in jail for causing a massive loss of over INR 300 billion or over $6 billion to the national exchequer, alongwith the others, four of whom had paid him hefty bribes and grabbed spectrum licences at throwaway prices. Two men associated with the disgraced Raja have already died under mysterious circumstances in Tamil Nadu.