Indian court acquits all in multi-billion dollar telecom scam

NEW DELHI, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- A special court in the national capital Thursday acquitted all the accused, including the country's former Telecom Minister A. Raja, in the multi-billion dollar telecom scam, India's biggest corruption scandal.

Special Judge O.P. Saini freed Raja and 19 other accused, including three companies, saying that the prosecution failed to prove its case against them in the scam.

The scandal pertains to the misselling of bandwidth to telecom companies in 2008 by Raja, who was the telecom minister in previous Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government, thus causing a loss of 40 billion U.S. dollars to exchequer.

The scandal came to light only in 2010 when the top government auditor pointed out the loss due to the selling of the second generation frequency licences by Raja to few telecom companies on a "first-come, first-served" basis, instead of an auction. Raja denies any wrongdoing.

Other accused freed in the case included Raja's party colleague K. Kanimozhi and top executives of some private telecom companies. Raja's regional DMK party of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu was an ally in the then United Progressive Alliance government.

In February 2012, India's Supreme Court cancelled 122 telecommunications licences awarded to companies in 2008. "Licences after January 2008 are quashed. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India will make fresh allocations by auction," the court said.

India is one of the world's fastest growing markets for mobile phones with over 900 million connections. Enditem