NEW DELHI: Indian police on Saturday charged a former telecom minister with conspiracy, cheating and forgery in an alleged mobile spectrum fraud that cost the nation billions of dollars in lost revenues.
The south Indian politician was also accused of corruption on a charge sheet that ran to 80,000 pages and was carried in seven steel trunks to the New Delhi court house.
Raja, a low-caste politician from a regional party in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's national Congress-led coalition, is suspected of rigging the rules for the sale of second generation mobile licences in 2008 to favour some companies.
Eight other people, including Raja's private secretary R.K. Chandolia and former telecom secretary Siddharth Behurawere, were also charged with corruption, cheating and conspiracy while 125 witnesses have been named.
Several senior business executives were also charged while three telecom companies -- including Unitech and Swan Telecom -- were named as beneficiaries of the alleged racket.
All those investigated by the federal Central Bureau of Investigation have denied any wrongdoing in the scandal, one of a string to have shaken the Congress government during its second term.
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