CBI grills 2G scam accused Balwa

The Central Bureau of Investigation on Wednesday questioned 2G scam accused Shahid Balwa in connection with audio recordings of purported conversation between its prosecutor A K Singh and another accused Unitech Managing Director Sanjay Chandra on the case.

Balwa arrived at the CBI headquarters and was immediately taken before the special team constituted by CBI Director Ranjit Sinha to probe the matter.

He was questioned about his relations with Singh, the prosecutor who has since been taken off from the case.

The sources said Swan and DB Realty promoter Balwa was asked to join investigations in the case as his name cropped up in the purported conversation.

With corporate rivalry emerging as the main reason behind such recordings, the CBI is expecting more such conversations to emerge in the near future.

Meanwhile, the agency has received the report from Central Forensic Science Laboratory about the previous CD purportedly having conversations between its prosecutor and Chandra, who is an accused in the 2G Telecom spectrum allocation scam.

The CFSL has said that the conversations are "untampered". However, in the absence of voice samples of Singh and Chandra, it could not authenticate whether the voices in the recordings are of the duo, they said.

They clarified that so far there are no indications of CBI's case getting affected in the 2G scam.

Singh, who was removed as prosecutor after surfacing of tapes, has reportedly told investigators that there was nothing unusual in discussing case related facts with the defence and it is a normal practice as far as it does not adversely affect prosecution's case, they claimed.

Unitech rejected the allegations, saying Chandra had never met the prosecutor in the 2G case outside the court or had any phone conversation with him.

The company has also denied that Chandra's voice was on the tape and said it appeared a fabricated voice recording sent anonymously to CBI.