A special court here on Friday framed charges of criminal conspiracy, with the intention to cheat the telecom department, against Essar Group and its promoters Anshuman Ruia and Ravi Ruia as well as Loop Telecom and its promoters I.P. Khaitan and Kiran Khaitan in connection with the 2G spectrum allocation scam case.
Special CBI judge O.P. Saini charged the Ruias and Khaitans and three companies — Loop Telecom Ltd, Loop Mobile India Ltd and Essar Teleholdings Ltd — for misleading the department of telecommunications (DoT) for issuance of Unified Access Service (UAS) licences in 21 telecom circles in the country. The four persons and the companies have been charged under IPC Section 120-B (criminal conspiracy) read with Section 420 (cheating). Essar Group director (strategy and planning) Vikas Saraf was charged with IPC Sections 120-B and 420 (criminal conspiracy as well as cheating). The court also granted bail to all the five executives in the case of concealing the fact that Essar Teleholdings was a major shareholder in Loop Telecom and Loop Mobile, which led to breach of Clause 8 of guidelines for issuance of UAS licences.
The court granted them bail on personal surety of `5 lakh each and two bail bonds of the like amount each. The accused have been asked to surrender their passports before the court and to be personally present before it during each hearing.
The CBI had, in its supplementary chargesheet filed on December 12 last year in the multi-crore telecom spectrum scam case, had accused the Ruias, Khaitans, Mr Saraf and the three companies of indulging in criminal conspiracy and cheating to acquire licences to operate 2G spectrum waves in 21 circles in the country.
The CBI, in the chargesheet, had alleged that Essar, which already had a stake as an existing telecom operator (Vodafone), created a “front company” Loop Telecom to secure additional spectrum which was in contravention of then telecom policy.