New Delhi: Former Tamil Nadu chief minister and DMK chief M Karunanidhi is likely to stay on in the national capital till a verdict on the bail plea of his daughter and DMK lawmaker Kanimozhi is announced.
The hearing of the plea for bail, the third since Kanimozhi was sent to jail on May 20 this year for her role in the 2G scam, is to take place on Monday.
Kanimozhi has been charged for criminal breach of trust and criminal conspiracy.
The Congress and the UPA government are not willing to be drawn into the ongoing investigations.
Law and Justice Minister Salman Khurshid said, "When charges are framed or have been framed, it means a trial has now begun formally. When the matter is now sub-judice, it would not be correct or appropriate to comment on it outside court."
Karunanidhi, who arrived in Delhi on Friday evening, met Kanimozhi in Tihar jail yesterday. He also called on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi.
The 17 accused, including former telecom minister A Raja, Kanimozhi, real estate magnates Shahid Blwa, Vinod Goenka and Sanjay Chandra, besides three executives of the Reliance ADA Group, have been charged for various offences under the Indian Penal Code, including criminal conspiracy, forgery and cheating amongst others.
All the accused have been charged under Section 409 of the Indian Penal Code, which hands a minimum punishment of seven years and a maximum punishment of life imprisonment.
They also stand accused under Sections 120B (Criminal Conspiracy), 42 (Cheating), 468 (Forgery for Purpose of Cheating) and 471 (Using as Genuine a Forged Document) of the Indian penal Code. Under the Prevention of Corruption Act, the accused have been charged under Sections 7, 11, 12 and 13.
"The charges were framed on Saturday, so now the CBI will have to prove the charges… it will take time, the trial will go on. The onus is on the CBI to prove the charges. As far as the people arrested are concerned, they plead innocence and they are confident that they are innocent, the charges are false. Let the CBI prove the charges," DMK leader T Elangovan said.
The telecom scam, one of India's biggest graft cases ever, may have cost Rs 1.76 lakh crores in revenue to the public exchequer as per the country's apex auditing body, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG).
The trial in the 2G spectrum case is now set to begin on November 11.
ANI
First Published: Sunday, October 23, 2011, 11:29