Raja questioned on investments; more arrests likely

New Delhi, Feb 4 (PTI) The questioning of arrested formertelecom minister A Raja by the CBI continued for the secondday today during which names of certain ex-bureaucrats came tolight and this could lead to more arrests soon.

Official sources said the CBI grilled Raja on his allegedinvestments and connections with certain companies based inChennai and some other cities.

He was confronted with seized documents and askedspecific questions based on the same.

The sources said names of some former bureaucrats havealso cropped up during the questioning and more arrests arelikely to take place soon.

Asked how soon, sources said possibly by the Februaryeight as certain information needs to be worked on.

Raja along with his former private secretary R KChandolia and former telecom secretary Siddharth Behura werealso questioned on the last minute changes in spectrum policythat were put in place.

Meanwhile, the agency also questioned former DeputyDirector General (Access Control) of DoT A K Srivastava forseveral hours. Sources said the agency also examined R KGupta, another DoT official.

Raja, Chandolia and Behura were arrested by the agencyon Wednesday and were remanded to five days of police custodyby a special CBI Court yesterday.

The agency has alleged that the accused conspired withsome private companies in putting a cap on the maximum numberof applications which could be entertained for the grant oflicences.

This was against the recommendations of the TRAI, thetelecom watchdog, that the competitive bidding process shouldbe preferred over the first-come-first-serve basis, it hadsaid in the Court.

"The DoT officials had selectively leaked the informationto some of the corporates regarding the date of issuance ofletters of intent on January 10, 2008," it said, adding thatas a result, only few of the companies were able to depositthe licence fee.

The probe agency had lodged an FIR on October 21, 2009against some unknown persons in the case.

The Enforcement Directorate has also registered a caseunder Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) and is runninga parallel probe.