The Delhi High Court on Thursday said it will begin hearing the appeals by the CBI and ED against the acquittal of former Telecom Minister A. Raja and others in the 2G spectrum allocation case on a day-to-day basis from August 28.
Justice Dinesh Kumar Sharma expressed displeasure over a request for an adjournment made by the counsel for the probe agencies to await the appointment of special counsel for CBI to argue the case.
The judge, however, remarked that things “cannot be hanging fire like this... How will we continue like this? We can’t continue giving dates like this... List after two weeks. Thereafter, the matter shall be taken up on a day-to-day basis”.
The court posted the case for hearing on August 28.
The case is currently at the stage of ‘leave to appeal’, which is a formal permission granted by a court to a party to challenge a decision in a higher court.
Earlier, the case was being heard on a day to day basis by Justice Brijesh Sethi, who retired on November 30, 2020, and had released the matter from his board owing to paucity of time.
In December 2017, a Special CBI Court here had acquitted Mr. Raja, Kanimozhi and others in the CBI and ED cases relating to the 2G case noting that the prosecution had “miserably failed” to prove the charges.
The Special CBI Court also acquitted 17 others, including late DMK supremo M. Karunanidhi’s wife Dayalu Ammal, Vinod Goenka, Asif Balwa, film producer Karim Morani, P. Amirtham and Sharad Kumar, director of Kalaignar TV in the ED case.
On March 19, 2018, ED approached the High Court challenging the special court’s order acquitting all the accused. A day later, the CBI too had challenged in the HC the acquittal of the accused in the case.
