New Delhi: The questioning of arrested former
telecom minister A Raja by the CBI continued for the second
day on Thursday during which names of certain ex-bureaucrats came to
light and this could lead to more arrests soon.
Official sources said the CBI grilled Raja on his alleged
investments and connections with certain companies based in
Chennai and some other cities.
He was confronted with seized documents and asked
specific questions based on the same.
The sources said names of some former bureaucrats have
also cropped up during the questioning and more arrests are
likely to take place soon.
Asked how soon, sources said possibly by the February
eight as certain information needs to be worked on.
Raja along with his former private secretary R K
Chandolia and former telecom secretary Siddharth Behura were
also questioned on the last minute changes in spectrum policy
that were put in place.
Meanwhile, the agency also questioned former Deputy
Director General (Access Control) of DoT A K Srivastava for
several hours. Sources said the agency also examined R K
Gupta, another DoT official.
Raja, Chandolia and Behura were arrested by the agency
on Wednesday and were remanded to five days of police custody
by a special CBI Court yesterday.
The agency has alleged that the accused conspired with
some private companies in putting a cap on the maximum number
of applications which could be entertained for the grant of
licences.
This was against the recommendations of the TRAI, the
telecom watchdog, that the competitive bidding process should
be preferred over the first-come-first-serve basis, it had
said in the Court.
"The DoT officials had selectively leaked the information
to some of the corporates regarding the date of issuance of
letters of intent on January 10, 2008," it said, adding that
as a result, only few of the companies were able to deposit
the licence fee.
The probe agency had lodged an FIR on October 21, 2009
against some unknown persons in the case.
The Enforcement Directorate has also registered a case
under Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) and is running
a parallel probe.
PTI
