Years of trial, then a verdict
Published 9 October 2026
The charges in the CBI and Enforcement Directorate cases are alleged offences. The special court acquitted all the accused on 21 December 2017, and the CBI appeal is pending. (Special CBI court judgment, 21 December 2017; Delhi High Court case status)
The criminal judgment records a substantial evidentiary process. The prosecution examined 153 witnesses. After its evidence closed, the accused were questioned under Section 313 of the Criminal Procedure Code and denied the allegations. Ten accused ultimately called 29 defence witnesses. Raja gave evidence himself. The judgment identifies witnesses from the department, financial institutions, companies, the registrar-related record and other public bodies, and discusses their testimony at length. This was not an acquittal reached without a trial or without documents. Nor does the volume of testimony demonstrate that the allegations were true. The essential question was how the testimony connected documents, policy changes and money transfers to the particular criminal acts charged. A witness proving a bank record did not automatically prove that the transfer was a bribe. A witness proving the movement of a departmental file did not automatically prove a conspiracy behind the decision recorded in it. The judge's final reasoning repeatedly turned on those missing connections and on differences between statements to the police, testimony under examination and contemporaneous records. The scale gives context to the judgment's length; the reasoning gives context to the outcome. (Special CBI court judgment, 21 December 2017)
The criminal judgment records a prosecution calculation separate from the CAG's headline maximum. In describing the allegations, paragraph 86 says the growth of adjusted gross revenue per MHz per year was used to index the 2001 entry price by about 3.5 times. On that basis, the prosecution alleged possible additional revenue of Rs 22,535.6 crore for new unified access licences and Rs 8,448.95 crore for dual-technology users, totalling Rs 30,984.55 crore. This was a prosecution allegation summarised by the court, not a loss the acquittal judgment found proved. The judgment's earlier account of the initial case also contained a different estimate above Rs 22,000 crore based on extrapolation from Swan and Unitech transactions. These numbers cannot be lined up as though they were successive audited measurements of the same object. They used different indicators, covered different stages of the allegation and did not include the same categories as the CAG's maximum. (Special CBI court judgment, 21 December 2017)
The Rs 200 crore Kalaignar TV transaction was another distinct question, not a small component that can simply be added to the audit loss. The prosecution alleged that money moved from Dynamix Realty through Kusegaon Fruits and Vegetables and Cineyug Films to Kalaignar TV as illegal gratification. The criminal judgment described that allegation in its account of the charge sheet and ultimately rejected the proof of criminality in the concluding paragraph. The High Court's 2024 leave order referred specifically to the trial court's handling of the Rs 200 crore transaction as a matter relevant to deeper examination. The correct vocabulary changes with the source: "the prosecution alleged" for the charge sheet, "the trial court rejected" for the 2017 finding, and "the High Court identified for examination" for the leave-stage concern. None of these formulations alone supplies a final appellate finding that the money was a bribe. Nor can a counterfactual estimate of forgone government revenue establish the character of a particular private payment. Treating the money trail separately allows the report to examine dates, entities, loan explanations and the evidence of quid pro quo without letting the vast presumptive-loss headline do the work of proving the alleged gratification. (Special CBI court judgment, 21 December 2017; Delhi High Court leave order, 22 March 2024)
The trial's equity section recorded two competing interpretations of the foreign investments. The prosecution treated the transactions as gains made after the allocation, while the defence said the companies issued fresh equity, existing promoters did not sell their shares, and the incoming money stayed within the companies. The judge said that neither share offloading nor fresh equity was prohibited by a rule or guideline at the relevant time and that no lock-in period had been prescribed. He quoted the probe officer's acknowledgment that infusion through fresh shares was not the same as a sale of existing equity, while noting the officer's concern about a transfer of control beyond a threshold. The judgment said the officer could not identify a specific guideline preventing the transaction and concluded that the share transactions did not help the prosecution's case. This is a legal and evidentiary conclusion, not proof that the licences had no economic value. The CAG's valuation inference and the trial's legal analysis can therefore differ without using contradictory definitions of money: one estimated the value indicated by investment; the other asked whether the transaction proved the criminal allegation. (Special CBI court judgment, 21 December 2017)
The Rs 200 crore section of the trial judgment did not dispute merely whether transfers through several entities could be traced. It asked whether those transfers were illegal gratification linked to official acts. The prosecution's route ran from Dynamix Realty to Kusegaon, then Cineyug and Kalaignar TV. The judge said witnesses from all four entities had been examined but none had testified that the transaction was a payment of illegal gratification or a sham connected to the grant of licences. He criticised the prosecution for not putting that core theory and the alleged concealment by loan documentation to the witnesses. In his reasoning, complaints about a document's form or a transaction's commercial oddity did not establish the missing link to a public servant. Paragraph 1695 explicitly distinguished proving the movement of money from proving the character of that money. An elaborate flow chart can show the route and amounts accurately while still leaving the alleged quid pro quo unproved. (Special CBI court judgment, 21 December 2017)
The judgment set out the prosecution's circumstantial theory in considerable detail: delayed documentation, lack of originals or stamp paper, asserted violations of agreements and company objects, low interest, lack of collateral, accounting treatment, speed of transfers and proximity to foreign investment in Swan. The defence disputed the significance of those matters. The judge said relevant witnesses had not been asked to explain them and that the alleged deficiencies were not connected by evidence to Raja's official acts. He acknowledged that high-level corruption would rarely generate direct proof, but said that the political importance or magnitude of a case could not replace admissible evidence. Paragraph 1718 added a useful symmetry: imperfect documentation does not by itself make a payment a bribe, while perfect documentation does not make a bribe clean. Everything depended on the facts and connecting evidence. The acquittal's reasoning was therefore not that complicated financial routing was always innocent, nor that circumstantial proof was unavailable in principle. It was that this record did not establish the required link. That distinction permits critical examination of the inquiry without presenting unusual transactions as automatically criminal or automatically harmless. (Special CBI court judgment, 21 December 2017)
The trial judgment discussed the timing of money in two different ways. The prosecution relied on its movement shortly after the investment in Swan and on the later repayment after later developments. The judge, however, emphasised the gap between the official approval of spectrum for Delhi on 26 August 2008 and the first Rs 10 crore tranche on 23 December 2008. He said that, without another evidentiary link, connecting the two events remained conjectural. He also treated the asserted timing of repayment as insufficient in the absence of other evidence. It is the trial judge's assessment of the chronology in this case. A properly sourced timeline should display the relevant official decision, foreign investment, payment tranches, documents and repayments separately. The appeal's admission allows the evidence to be reviewed; it does not itself change these dates or settle what inference they ultimately support. (Special CBI court judgment, 21 December 2017; Delhi High Court leave order, 22 March 2024)
The judge's criticism of the probe officers also concerned the basis for characterising the transfers. He said one officer called them sham and dubious without supplying a reason supported by witness evidence or admissible circumstances, while the chief probe officer had not deposed about the transfer through the four entities. The point was not that probe officers were barred from drawing conclusions. It was that their conclusion was not itself proof of the charged offence. The judgment distinguished an officer's role in collecting and explaining evidence from the court's task of determining criminal liability. The High Court later questioned whether the trial judge should himself have used the powers of the court to clarify ambiguities. This creates a real appellate issue about the handling of evidence without converting the inquiry's descriptions into facts found on appeal. The report should follow the stages: collection, allegation, examination, trial evaluation and proposed re-appraisal. (Special CBI court judgment, 21 December 2017; Delhi High Court leave order, 22 March 2024)
The trial judgment set out conspiracy law before assessing the particular allegations. It cited Supreme Court authority recognising that conspiracies are often secret and may be inferred from circumstances and conduct rather than proved by a direct confession. The same discussion required an agreement to pursue the unlawful object; a wish, suspicion or a group of unrelated facts made to look coherent was insufficient. The judge accepted circumstantial proof in principle. His dispute with the prosecution concerned what the particular circumstances established. A legal history can therefore ask whether the inferences were correctly assessed without claiming that the Court disallowed circumstantial evidence altogether. Nor should it presume that every unusual sequence of official acts and company transactions necessarily supplied the missing agreement. The law quoted in the judgment required attention to the accused's concurrence and role. That requirement gave structure to the later sections on cutoff decisions, equity transactions and money movement. They were examined as potential evidence of a charged agreement, not simply as events whose political notoriety settled their criminal character. (Special CBI court judgment, 21 December 2017)
The judgment applied that distinction to the alleged parking of money in Kalaignar TV. It recorded the prosecution's reliance on Raja and Kanimozhi belonging to the same party and meeting regularly. The judge said the cited testimony established meetings and political association but did not connect those people to the generation, transfer or predetermined destination of the alleged illegal gratification. He treated the inference of conspiracy from association alone as speculative. This was a case-specific evaluation of what the witnesses supplied, not a general rule that politicians' relationships can never be relevant to a conspiracy inquiry. Relationships may provide context, but the charged agreement still requires evidence connecting the people and acts. The trial's reasoning says which link it considered missing. The appeal allows that evaluation to be examined further, but an admitted appeal does not itself convert an association into a proved unlawful agreement. (Special CBI court judgment, 21 December 2017)
The trial's cheating section addressed an allegation that Raja and Behura altered a note and thereby misled departmental officers into believing that the changed priority rule had the Solicitor General's concurrence. The judgment reproduced the relevant IPC provisions on cheating, dishonest inducement, forgery for cheating and use of a forged document. The judge said no departmental witness had testified that an accused made the alleged false representation to him or that the note misled him in the way the prosecution claimed. On that basis he rejected the cheating allegation. A public-law finding can condemn an allocation process without establishing the particular deception alleged against particular defendants. The trial section was testing the prosecution's account of how officers were induced to act, with the note's claimed legal concurrence as its specific mechanism. It is more informative to explain that allegation and the missing witness link than to summarise the entire criminal case as a court finding that no administrative irregularity ever occurred. (Special CBI court judgment, 21 December 2017)
The breach-of-trust section considered the prosecution's claim that Raja and Behura were custodians of spectrum and had dishonestly allocated it contrary to departmental norms. The judge reproduced the requirements of entrustment or dominion over property and dishonest misappropriation, conversion, use or disposal in the terms of the provisions applied. He concluded that the evidence did not establish the offence's ingredients against the accused. The conclusion belongs to this charged case and remains subject to the appellate process. Nor should the constitutional doctrine of public trust be treated as mechanically proving the criminal offence. The words sound similar, but the proceedings ask different questions and apply different legal requirements. The February judgment considered the State's trustee responsibility and the legality of distribution; this section considered whether the criminal elements were proved against individuals. Preserving the distinction makes the apparently conflicting results easier to understand without diminishing either the public-law remedy or the prosecution's burden in the criminal court. (Special CBI court judgment, 21 December 2017; Supreme Court judgment, 2 February 2012)
The trial judgment considered the sanction order and testimony from the Finance Ministry official who authenticated it. The witness described the departmental examination, discussion with the minister, relevant documents and statements shown, and authorisation to authenticate the decision. Cross-examination exposed limits in the witness's recollection and the short time spent with a large record. The judge nevertheless found sufficient application of mind by the competent authority. He said an administrative sanction decision did not require reading every page as though deciding the entire dispute on its merits. The defence's challenge therefore failed. This matters because an acquittal can be misreported as the consequence of a defective sanction or a purely technical barrier. In this section the judge upheld the prosecution's ability to proceed through that gate. His final acquittal rested on his assessment of the charges and evidence, not acceptance of the particular sanction objection. The example also connects with the earlier Supreme Court explanation that sanction scrutiny is prima facie and administrative, while keeping the two different sanction disputes and the people concerned separate. (Special CBI court judgment, 21 December 2017)
The trial judge's treatment of internal notes supplied another reason to examine the reasoning rather than rely on labels. He criticised the prosecution for using selected notings while discounting preceding and subsequent material favourable to the defence. He said the whole file had to be read because individual officers' suggestions might be accepted or rejected by the final decision maker. The judgment cited authority distinguishing an internal view from an effective government order. That was not a declaration that file notes could never be evidence. Indeed, the judgment repeatedly analysed them. It was an objection to treating an isolated objection or suggestion as conclusive proof of the final decision's criminal character. The High Court later raised preliminary concerns about the appraisal of documentary and witness evidence, opening those issues to merits review. The trial's reasoning makes sequence and context central; the appeal permits scrutiny of whether that context was correctly evaluated. (Special CBI court judgment, 21 December 2017; Delhi High Court leave order, 22 March 2024)
The trial judgment did not accept the prosecution's claim that Raja had misrepresented the relevant facts to the Prime Minister. It discussed two November letters, a December letter, the subsequent PMO notes and the limits of the record about which material had actually been placed before the Prime Minister. The judge criticised the January PMO analysis for concentrating on spectrum questions while not presenting the changed licence-priority issue adequately. He ultimately attributed the incomplete presentation to PMO officials rather than Raja. These are the trial judge's observations in evaluating the allegations against the accused before him. They are not convictions of the officials criticised, and some passages expressly acknowledge uncertainty about what the Prime Minister saw. It can explain that the criminal court read the same general decision sequence differently from the audit and the JPC majority summary. That disagreement is important, especially when a widely repeated claim that the Prime Minister was misled is assigned to one individual. The owner, date, proceeding and evidentiary context of each version determine what can accurately be said. (Special CBI court judgment, 21 December 2017)
The audit criticised assurances in the minister's correspondence and the failure to follow the suggested transparent pricing and broader deliberation. PRS's JPC summary attributes to the parliamentary majority the conclusion that the telecom minister misled the Prime Minister, while reporting dissenting concern that the Prime Minister's own response was not adequately examined. The trial judge instead focused on what PMO files and testimony showed about the presentation of the licence issue and rejected the charged misrepresentation by Raja. These sources did not conduct the same process, hear the same evidence in the same way or decide the same legal issue. The existing record supports a more disciplined account: the audit's governance criticism, a contested parliamentary position available here through secondary summary, and the criminal court's contrary evaluation which is open to appeal. (CAG Report No. 19 of 2010 (NDTV-hosted full copy); PRS summary of the JPC report, 29 October 2013; Special CBI court judgment, 21 December 2017)
The Enforcement Directorate's judgment identifies Complaint Case No. 01/14, ECIR/31/DZ/2010 and 19 accused, including individuals and companies. It was instituted on 25 April 2014 and decided on 21 December 2017. Those identifiers separate it from the CBI's CC No. 01/11 and its 17 accused. In paragraphs 165-168 of that 2017 judgment, Judge O. P. Saini treated the acquittal in the CBI scheduled-offence case as removing the alleged "proceeds of crime", which he called the foundational fact for the money-laundering offence. On that reasoning, he said the remaining evidence issues did not need discussion and acquitted all the accused. The ED case was a distinct proceeding, but its stated factual foundation depended on the alleged criminal transaction litigated in the CBI case. (Special CBI/PMLA court judgment, ED v A. Raja, 21 December 2017; The Hindu Centre, judgment index)
The ED judgment also addressed property attached in the proceeding. It recorded property worth Rs 223.55 crore, discussed the applicable disposal provisions and rejected the prosecution's interpretation that the word "finds" permitted confiscation despite the acquittal in the circumstances before it. Paragraph 172 ordered release to the persons from whom the property had been attached after the period for filing an appeal. The amount of attached property is not the same as the alleged Rs 200 crore payment, and neither amount is the CAG's presumptive revenue loss. They belong to different legal and accounting categories. The judgment's release direction also cannot establish that release actually occurred, when it occurred or what any subsequent appellate order did to the property. Those are execution and later-proceeding questions. A final case-status table needs an agency, original proceeding, challenged judgment, appellate identifier and dated stage for each, rather than a single undifferentiated entry saying "the 2G appeal." (Special CBI/PMLA court judgment, ED v A. Raja, 21 December 2017; Delhi High Court order, 28 July 2026)
The criminal judgment's concluding criticism of the prosecution went beyond a general statement that evidence was insufficient. Paragraph 1812 described a decline in coordination and responsibility during the trial. The judge said applications and replies were signed by a junior officer when senior probe officers and prosecutors declined to take responsibility, and that written submissions were delayed until rebuttal rather than being provided with the prosecution's main argument. He described difficulty obtaining signatures on written submissions and disagreement between the special prosecutor's office and the regular prosecution team over who should sign them. These are the judge's observations about the litigation before him. They are not an independent finding about every action of the CBI outside the courtroom, nor proof of a hidden political decision to abandon the case. They nevertheless help explain his assessment that the presentation of the case became directionless. The details also make the acquittal understandable as more than a contest between dramatic allegations and a dramatic closing quotation. The court criticised how the evidence and argument were assembled, challenged and owned. (Special CBI court judgment, 21 December 2017)
The same closing section addressed public applications asserting that important material had been omitted. The judge said numerous visitors made allegations but did not produce definite admissible evidence, and that applications for further inquiry or additional accused lacked the material needed to support them. He used those experiences to distinguish public perception from proof in court. The point was what the particular applicants produced to the criminal court and whether they would enter the witness box or support their requests with relevant evidence. This limitation matters when evaluating the famous statement that the judge waited for evidence for years. It was a criticism of unsupported public assertions and the deficient criminal proof as he assessed it, not a claim that his courtroom contained no evidence at all. The judgment itself lists 153 prosecution witnesses and large documentary records. Holding these passages together avoids a misleading literal interpretation of a rhetorical closing observation. (Special CBI court judgment, 21 December 2017)
The criminal judgment was pronounced on 21 December 2017. Its cover identifies CC No. 01/11, the CBI case, the 17 accused and the pronouncement date. In its concluding paragraphs, Judge O. P. Saini said there was no evidence on the record produced before him indicating criminality in the alleged acts relating to the cutoff, first-come-first-served implementation, dual technology, eligibility, non-revision of the entry fee and the Rs 200 crore transaction involving Kalaignar TV. He said the charge sheet relied on misreading, selective reading and out-of-context reading of official records, as well as statements that witnesses had not adopted in the witness box or that conflicted with the documentary record. Paragraph 1819 then acquitted all the accused. Where sources differ, a newspaper retrospective gives 17 December 2017 as the judgment date, while the judgment itself gives 21 December 2017. The primary record controls, so this piece uses 21 December. These are the trial court's findings on the trial record, and they were later challenged in appeal. (Special CBI court judgment, 21 December 2017)
The trial judge's closing criticism also addressed the department's record keeping and policy language. He described files scattered across different subjects, missing or unhelpful records of meetings, ambiguous terminology and notes difficult for outsiders to interpret. He used the dispute over terms such as "associate", "promoter" and "stake" as an example of guidelines whose meaning remained unclear even within the department. His conclusion was that administrative confusion and the way selected facts were presented had helped generate suspicion unsupported, in his assessment, by the court record. That explanation deserves more space than the famous one-line quotation that the prosecution had failed. In the subsequent leave proceeding, the High Court questioned aspects of the trial judge's appreciation of testimony and documentary evidence. (Special CBI court judgment, 21 December 2017; Delhi High Court leave order, 22 March 2024)