2G scam: Govt. places Radia tapes in sealed cover before Supreme Court

NEW DELHI - The Central Government on Thursday placed before the Supreme Court the recorded tapes containing the conversations between corporate lobbyist Radia and others in connection with the 2G scam. They were in a sealed cover.

Placing the recorded conversation before the bench comprising Justices G S Singhvi and A K Ganguly, Solicitor General Gopal Subramanium said that it is a hard disc drive directly downloaded from the server, which contains the conversations.

However, advocate Prashant Bhushan appearing for the NGO Centre for Public Interest Litigation (CPIL) said though CBI maintains that there were 5,800 conversations, it has prepared the transcript of only 3,000 such conversations.

On Wednesday, Subramanium said he had got instructions that there was no objection to the handing over of the tapes, and that the Court could give a direction for preserving them in whatever way it thought best.

Earlier, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) had questioned Radia for her alleged role in the scam.

Radia was summoned after the tapes exposed how she had allegedly lobbied with senior journalists and telecom companies and asked them to play their part in the 2G scam.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had in an affidavit told the Supreme Court that the role of Radia would be examined in the 2G-spectrum allocation case in which irregularities were of “enormous magnitude” having international ramifications. (ANI)