New Delhi: The Patiala House Court in New Delhi on Thursday acquitted all 19 accused, including former telecom minister A Raja, DMK MP Kanimozhi, in the Enforcement Directorate's money laundering case relating to the 2G scam.
Besides Raja and Kanimozhi, Special Judge O P Saini also acquitted Shahid Balwa, Vinod Goenka, Asif Balwa, Rajiv Aggarwal, Karim Morani, P Amirtham and Sharad Kumar in connection with the case.
“The court said that the prosecution has miserably failed to prove any of its charge. Thus all accused are acquitted,” said Vijay Aggarwal, the lawyer of Swan Telecom promoters Shahid Usman Balwa, Vinod Goenka and others.
All the acquitted people have to furnish a bail bond of Rs 5 lakhs each. This is to ensure their presence in a higher appellate court if the verdict is challenged.
DMK supremo M Karunanidhi’s daughter Kanimozhi thanked “everyone who stood by me”.
Hailing the verdict as a “victory”, DMK leader Durai Murugan said: “With political motives this case was put in us. Conspiracies were hatched against us but all have been blown away now,” Murugan said.
Congress leader P Chidambaram also commented on the court’s judgement, saying, “Allegation of a major scam involving the highest levels of Government was never true, was not correct and that has been established today”.
The ED had, in its chargesheet, also named Karunanidhi's wife Dayalu Ammal as an accused in the case in which it had alleged that Rs 200 crore was paid by Swan Telecom (P) Ltd (STPL) promoters to DMK-run Kalaignar TV.
In its final report, the ED had named 10 individuals and nine companies as accused and listed them in the charge sheet for the offences under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.
Besides Kalaignar TV, the other companies accused in the case were STPL (now Etisalat DB Telecom (P) Ltd), Kusegaon Realty (P) Ltd, Cineyug Media & Entertainment (P) Ltd, Dynamix Realty, Eversmile Construction Company (P) Ltd, Conwood Construction & Developers (P) Ltd, DB Realty Ltd, and Mystical Construction (P) Ltd (earlier known as Nihar Constructions (P) Ltd).
