2012 yearender: Cases involving politicians reached climax in court

Several old and new cases involving politicians reached final stages in Delhi trial courts in 2012 with Union Minister P Chidambaram emerging unscathed in 2G scam, but former BJP chief Bangaru Laxman landed in jail in an 11-year-old graft case.

As trial courts remained busy dealing with cases of high and mighty, the long arm of law caught up with 72-year-old Laxman who was awarded four years' jail term for taking Rs 1 lakh as bribe in a fictitious defence deal case 11 years ago.

The year provided a relief to Finance Minister Chidambaram with a special CBI court dismissing Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy's plea to rope in the powerful minister as an accused in the 2G spectrum allocation case.

On February 4, Special CBI Judge O P Saini gave clean chit to Chidambaram holding that he did not indulge in any criminal conspiracy to derive any pecuniary advantage in decisions taken along with former Telecom Minister A Raja, who is a key accused facing trial in the case.

The court held that there was no evidence to suggest that there was an agreement between Raja and Chidambaram, who was the Finance Minister during the controversial allocation of 2G spectrum in 2008, to subvert the telecom policy and obtain pecuniary advantage for himself or for any other person.

Raja, too, got some relief this year with the court granting him bail after over 15 months of his incarceration in the 2G case.

At the fag end of the year, a court here ordered framing of charges against Congress MP Suresh Kalmadi for allegedly abusing his office and causing a loss of over Rs 90 crore to the exchequer in a Commonwealth Games-related graft case.

The court ordered framing of charges against Kalmadi, the sacked CWG Organising Committee chief, for allegedly committing various offences including those of criminal conspiracy, cheating and forgery under the Indian Penal Code and many others under the Prevention of Corruption Act.

... contd.

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