Cast of 200 in a packed house & a 100,000-page legal thriller

The air of expectancy around Friday’s beginning of the 2G telecom spectrum case trial could match that for a blockbuster movie release.

Delhi’s Patiala House courtroom, which is packed at the best of times, is preparing to make room for even more as it is time for witnesses.

After nine months of fast-track hearing of the case, encompassing the rejection of hordes of bail applications and framing of charges, the trial marks the beginning of another long journey. Long enough to last at least a year, according to legal experts. The 2G case has close to 200 witnesses and entails 100,000-plus pages of documents. From bureaucrats and company officials to the former solicitor general, who is now the attorney general, and controversial lobbyists, it is a wide array of witnesses the CBI has lined up to strengthen its case.

“All numbers in the 2G case are big: the apparent loss to the exchequer, the number of the accused, the documents and now the witnesses. It will take a lot of time for the cross-examination of each one of them,” a senior lawyer said.

The court is likely to summon one or two witnesses at a time for examination by the prosecution and defence counsel. The first batch of witnesses to be summoned to the court will be related to the Reliance Telecom case as it is part of the first chargesheet filed by CBI. The witnesses in this case will include company officials, chartered accountants and bankers. Reliance Group president A N Sethuraman and Reliance Infrastraucture general manager Ashish Kareykar are among the first witnesses to be summoned. A set of 27 witnessess will be summoned in the first stage. Government officials from the department of telecom (DoT) and other bodies will be summoned later.

One of the star witnesses told this newspaper, “We have to study all the documents and the chain of events like we prepared for exams in school."

The list of witnesses includes the attorney general G E Vahanvati, former telecom secretary D S Mathur, former Trai chairman and DoT secretary Nripendra Misra, RBI governor and former finance secretary D Subbarao, corporate lobbyist Niira Radia, and former DDG at the DoT A K Srivastava, among others.

The defence lawyers will get their own set of witnesses after the prosecution evidence is formally closed. The court will hold hearings till the start of the Christmas holidays.

The 17 accused are hoping the trial would be the beginning of the end as far as their Tihar stay goes. After special CBI judge O P Saini pronounced the order on the framing of charges and asked the accused to sign a petition saying, "I plead not guilty and claim trial", this is what the lawyer for former telecom minister A Raja had to say: “Ladai to ab shuru hogi. Abhi tak toh one-way traffic tha (the real battle will begin now. Till now, it was one-way traffic).”