The Supreme Court on Thursday termed it an “imagination” of the trial judge to issue summons to directors of three top telecom companies that got excess spectrum at discounted price during the NDA Government’s tenure.
The court was dealing with a petition filed by Airtel’s Sunil Mittal, Hutch’s Aseem Ghosh and Sterling Cellular’s Ravi Ruia, who challenged the summons issued by the special 2G court on March 19, 2013 to join them as accused in the ongoing trial. Although the companies were named initially by CBI in its chargesheet submitted on December 21, 2012, the directors of these companies were added later by the trial judge who arrayed them as accused for being the “controlling minds” and “alter ego” of the companies.
With the CBI defending the order to summon the three corporate honchos, the Bench of Justices Hl Dattu and KS Radhakrishnan said, “It is the imagination of the learned judge…Where is the evidence against them. We have not reached that stage.”Proceeding on this thought, the Bench proposed to either allow trial to continue against the companies and not against the directors for the meantime or in the alternative, first decide the appeal filed by the three directors and then allow trial to proceed.
Senior advocate KK Venugopal appearing for CBI opposed the first proposal as he said, “Instead of a piecemeal trial, I would want this to be heard and then trial to take place.” But he raised objection against the Court entertaining the petitions of the company officials. Venugopal said, “They have only been issued summons. They have yet not been heard by the trial judge. The submissions they wish to make can even be made there.”
Advocate Prashant Bhushan appearing for NGO CPIl, at whose instance Court was monitoring the 2G case investigations, even proposed that for the present, the officials had not been made accused. To answer to the summons, they can be represented by their lawyers.But the bench decided to examine the appeals on August 5. It observed, “Matters required to be heard. In the meantime, they (petitioners) will not go to trial court or appear through their lawyers, otherwise this SlP (appeal) will become infructuous.”
The case against Bharti Airtel, Hutchinson Max Private limited (Vodafone India) and Sterling Cellular limited (Vodafone Cellular Services limited) dated back to allotment of excess spectrum by then Telecom Minister Pramod Mahajan during NDA regime in 2002. The excess allotment at reduced rates had allegedly caused Government a loss of `846.44 crore.