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Reliance Group officials' bail plea deferred

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CIOL Bureau
New Update

NEW DELHI, INDIA: The Supreme Court Monday said that the bench of Justice G.S. Singhvi and Justice H.L. Dattu will hear the bail pleas of three officials of Reliance Group, currently in judicial custody in the second generation (2G) spectrum case.

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The apex court bench of Justice G.S. Singhvi and Justice S.J. Mukhopadhaya said that the bail applications by the three officials would be heard by Justice Singhvi and Justice Dattu, who Aug 26 heard the pleas when these came up for hearing for the first time.

The bench of Justice Singhvi and Justice Dattu is Sep 27 hearing bail pleas of Sanjay Chandra of Unitech's telecom arm and Vinod Goenka of DB Reality. It may that day also indicate when it would take up the bail pleas of the three Reliance executives.

Justice Singhvi and Justice Dattu Aug 26 issued notices to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on the bail pleas of Reliance Group managing director Gautam Doshi, group president Surendra Pipara and senior vice president Hari Nayar.

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The three senior executives were sent to judicial custody after the trial court in April rejected their bail pleas. They moved the apex court challenging the Delhi High Court order which too turned down their bail pleas.

Appearing for Doshi, senior counsel Harish Salve told the court that the bail plea may be heard as the prosecution had said that there was nothing more it had to file before the trial court as far as he was concerned.

Salve said the investigating agency had charged his client with cheating and filing wrong papers.

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At this point, Justice Singhvi said that "it is better that the matter be heard by the same bench".

The petitioners in their pleas said there was no allegation that Reliance Communications paid any illegal gratification or was in any way connected in influencing the then communications minister A. Raja or any other official.

They said the investigating agency in its charge sheet claimed that because of collusion between certain public servants and others in the spectrum allocation, the exchequer suffered a notional loss of Rs.30,000 crore.

The estimate of loss at Rs.30,000 crore was inaccurate and only because the matter was receiving media coverage, it was not a legitimate indicator of the "magnitude" and "gravity" of the offence, the petitioners said.

The petitioner said that trial court failed to appreciate that there was no material on record whatsoever to show that they had any role in the transfer of control of Swan Telecom Pvt. Ltd. to the Dynamix Balwa Group as alleged.

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