The other six issues that the Supreme Court has ordered the CBI to look into — of the total 14 issues relating to criminal dimensions arising out of the conversations of corporate lobbyist Niira Radia with industrialists and others — are: alleged criminal misconduct by public servant in respect of survey/raid conducted by Income Tax department; payment of illegal gratification to Income Tax officials to get work done; Chartered Accountant working as tout of Income Tax officer; payment of illegal gratification/favours extended to public servants; conversations regarding allocation of spectrum and miscellaneous issues.
Quoting the report of the expert committee set up by the Income Tax department to analyse the conversations, the Bench said: “Analysis of the calls of Ms. Radia revealed that during the period of interception i.e. year 2008-2009, she had been talking over her phone to her employees, clients, media persons and other important persons in the field of politics, business, bureaucracy and journalism, etc. During investigation of the 2G spectrum case and the scrutiny of the transcripts, it emerged that Ms. Radia, through her companies, provided consultancy to Tata Group of companies, M/s Unitech Ltd., and M/s Reliance Industries Ltd. (Mukesh Dhirubhai Ambani Group).
“During her conversations, she discussed several important issues including judicial judgments, policy matters of Government of India, insider information of important issues related to Department of Telecommunications, the condition of civil aviation in India, allocation of coal & iron ore mines and issues related to gas and petroleum sector, etc. She discussed these issues at length with media persons, politicians, businessmen, corporate persons and bureaucrats, etc.”
The Bench increased the composition of the team in the IT department and asked it to scrutinise the remaining tapes and submit a comprehensive report to the court in two months.
