Custody of Raja, Balwa extended

IANS/New Delhi

Raja leaves the court after his hearing in New Delhi yesterday

A Delhi court yesterday extended the police custody of former communications minister Amdimuthu Raja and Shahid Usman Balwa, managing director of DB Realty, respectively by three and four days, in the spectrum allocation scandal. They have been accused of cheating and forgery.

Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Special Judge O P Saini said: "The crime is enormous in nature and its investigation is time consuming. Accordingly, considering the enormity of the crime, complex and complicated nature of investigation, voluminous documents involved in the case, I find that further custodial interrogation of the accused is justified.

"I have carefully gone through the case diaries and the statements recorded during investigation. The accused have caused huge loss to the state exchequer in the allotment of unified access services licences and the estimated loss to the state exchequer in the instant case is about Rs22,000 crore.”

Raja and Balwa were both remanded in four days’ CBI custody on February 10 to enable the probe agency to quiz them to "unearth the conspiracy” in the scandal.

According to the CBI, Balwa’s company Swan Telecom, a part of the Mumbai-based DB Realty, allegedly got favours in the spectrum allocation and caused the national exchequer a loss of over Rs22,000 crore ($40bn)

The CBI said the two men needed to be confronted with some more documents recovered by it. "They are further required to be put under sustained custodial interrogation and confronted with each other on the trail of money as well as with other suspects and witnesses so that the real facts and elements of criminal conspiracy, including omission and commission committed in this case, can be unearthed,” the CBI said.

The CBI had sought Raja’s custody for two days but the court gave the agency his custody for three days.

Raja was arrested on February 2 and remanded in CBI custody initially for five days. On February 8, his remand was extended for two more days after the agency told the court that he was not co-operating during questioning and was being evasive.

Balwa was brought to Delhi on Wednesday evening by a CBI team after a Mumbai court granted the agency his two-day transit remand. He was arrested in Mumbai late Tuesday.

The former minister’s custody was earlier extended by two more days on February 10 on the CBI’s plea.

On February 8, former telecom secretary Siddharth Behura and Raja`s former personal secretary R K Chandolia, were sent to 14 days of judicial custody.