The Delhi high court will on Monday hear the bail pleas of five corporate honchos, including the promoter of Etisalat DB, Sanjay Chandra, in connection with the 2G spectrum fraud case.
The five corporate executives who were sent to 14-day judicial custody had approached the Delhi high court after a special court hearing the case rejected bail applications, terming their pleas 'meritless' in the face of 'serious allegations' and 'incriminating evidence' in a chargesheet filed by the CBI.
They then moved an application seeking interim bail for one week so that they could move high court against order, but the court rejected that plea too.
The order came on the bail applications of Swan Telecom director Vinod Goenka, Unitech MD Sanjay Chandra, and three top officials of the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG) - Gautam Doshi, Hari Nair and Surendra Pipara.
The five executives, who were named in the CBI chargesheet, were not arrested during the probe.
The investigating agency had on April 15 sought the detention of five corporate executives chargesheeted by it for their alleged role in the 2G spectrum scam, saying that they might abscond and impede the trial.
The CBI, which opposed their bail pleas, said that some of the key witnesses, belonging to the corporate world, directly worked under them and the possibility of the accused winning them over could not be ruled out.
Former telecom minister A. Raja, former telecom secretary Siddhartha Behura, Raja's personal secretary R.K. Chandolia and Swan Telecom Promoter Shahid Usman Balwa are already in judicial custody and have been supplied with the copy of the chargesheet.
Raja was forced to resign from the Union Cabinet in 2010 after the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) faulted him for undervaluing spectrum to favour companies who were largely ineligible for 2G spectrum, and added that the government had probably lost Rs.1.76 lakh crore in estimated revenue.