The former telecom secretary Siddharth Behura was denied bail by the Delhi High Court in the 2G spectrum allocation scam. He was arrested along with the former telecom minister A Raja on February 2 of this year. Siddharth Behura and A Raja are the only two people who are still in jail as all the other 12 accused have been granted bail by the various courts.
Recently Delhi high court rejected the bail plea of 17 persons including former telecom minister A. Raja and Kanimozhi as they have been charged on grounds of criminal conspiracy, breach of trust, cheating and forgery. Earlier the telecom ministry issued licenses to the telecom operators on first come first serve basis instead of regular biding process.
A bench comprising Justice G. S. Singhvi and Justice H. L. Dattu on Thursday,13th October faulted Govt. for the 2 G Scam. They were hearing the bail pleas of two corporate executives of Unitech Wireless Pvt. Ltd and Swan Telecom nam, Sanjay Chandra and Vinod Goenka , the accused in 2G Scam case and said that the Government could have avoided the scam if they had acted according to the letter by Prime minister dated November 2, 2007 directing the allocation to be done through auction. It is clear from the correspondence between the prime minister and the then telecoms minister Raja, that decision of the telecoms department to decline the auction mode had been informed earlier itself. It could have been possible to take a decision even after Raja had issued the Letters of Intent (LoI) on January 10 as the allocation had been completed much later. The Additional Solicitor General Raja who was opposing the bail pleas said that charges against the accused would have stayed the same even though interference would have prevented the further execution.