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Special Judge O P Saini, hearing the 2G spectrum scam, has set a record of sorts with an unwieldy sentence running into 29 pages in the order he passed on October 22, framing charges against former Telecom Minister A Raja and 16 others.
The sentence begins at page 2 and goes on and on, with the full stop only on Page 30. It explains the charge of conspiracy against Raja and others. There are 12 other charges, each one of them set in single sentence. They are set out in just five pages.
The long conspiracy sentence that appears to have been set carefully by the judge to stand the scrutiny of battery of lawyers and the judges in the higher courts was brought to the notice of the Supreme Court by a lawyer three days ago while arguing for bail to the two accused. The SC bench did not react.
Saini, however, should not hope to find a place in the Guinness Book of World Records as there were many until four decades ago who enjoyed in writing grammatically correct lengthy sentences. The lawyer, who pinpointed his carefully-drafted order, did not give the word count of the sentence to compare it with other records.
While the longest English sentence recorded in the Guinness book is of 1,287 words in William Faulkner's novel Absalom, Absalom!, the last section of James Joyce's Ulysses, Molly Bloom's soliloquy, consists of two sentences, one 11,282 words long and second 12,931 words, while Jonathan Coe's 2001 novel The Rotters' Club contains a 13,955-word sentence.
However, as a new website that has sprung up to keep a watch on the 2G scam hearing, has already recommended Saini for an entry in the Guinness book in speed-reading or else he could not have passed orders in a mere 15-20 minutes of receiving the two charge-sheets, containing 127 pages and 49 pages respectively with approximately 85,000 pages as annexure.