NEW DELHI, Feb 3 � Former Communications Minister A. Raja and two of his aides will spend the next five days in the custody of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), a special court directed on Thursday, a day after the trio was arrested for their suspected role in the multibillion rupee scam over the allocation of airwaves for second generation (2G) phone services.
Raja, alleged to be at the centre of what is being billed as the biggest corruption scandal in India, however, got the backing from his party, Tamil Nadu�s ruling DMK, which said his arrest did not mean he was guilty.
But that may have been scant consolation for the one time powerful DMK politician, who along with his former personal secretary RK Chandolia and former Telecom Secretary Siddharth Behura spent the night in the CBI headquarters and will be grilled extensively in the coming days.
While the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) estimated the losses to be Rs 58,000 crore ($12.8 billion) and Rs 1.76 lakh crore ($40 billion), special CBI judge OP Saini put the figure at Rs 22,000 crore ($4.8 billion).
