From 2G to coal, why India’s biggest ‘scams’ keep ending in acquittals

India’s three defining corruption scandals of the last 15 years, the 2G spectrum allocation, the Commonwealth Games and the coal block cases, share a common trajectory. Each was fuelled by a Comptroller and Auditor General report quantifying enormous losses to the public exchequer.

Together, they triggered the political firestorm that helped unseat the former United Progressive Alliance government in 2014. Each led to years of criminal prosecution. And each, when it finally reached a courtroom where evidence had to be weighed against charges, ended the same way: with judges finding that the prosecution had proved little or nothing.

CBI court acquits Bander coal block case accused

On Friday (March 27), a special CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) court in Delhi acquitted all accused in the Bander coal block case, the oldest pending prosecution among the coal allocation cases. Former Rajya Sabha MP Vijay Darda, former coal secretary H C Gupta, businessman Manoj Kumar Jayaswal and AMR Iron and Steel were cleared of charges of conspiracy, cheating and corruption.

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In a 287-page judgment, Special Judge Sunena Sharma found that the CBI’s case rested on "conjunctures and surmises" and that the evidence was "highly insufficient" to establish any of the offences charged. Of the 27 coal cases disposed of so far across two special courts, a significant number have ended in acquittals.

All 2G spectrum case accused acquitted

The pattern is now unmistakable. In December 2017, CBI Special Judge O P Saini acquitted all accused in the 2G spectrum case, including former telecom minister A Raja and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader Kanimozhi.

When evidence of systemic dysfunction is treated as proof of individual guilt, the result is what India has witnessed in case after case: protracted trials and acquittals, with the human cost falling on the individuals caught in the process.

The court held that the CBI had "miserably failed to prove any charge" and criticised the agency for filing a "well choreographed chargesheet" built on a misreading of the case.

The CBI’s appeal, admitted by the Delhi High Court in 2024 after six years, remains pending.

CG cases' fate no different

The Commonwealth Games cases have followed the same course. Of the 19 FIRs (first information reports) filed in connection with alleged irregularities in the 2010 Delhi Games, the central prosecutions have largely collapsed.

There have been peripheral convictions in cases involving street-lighting and stadium-renovation contracts, but the major cases have unravelled. The CBI filed closure reports in key matters, and the Enforcement Directorate's money-laundering case against the Games' organising committee chairman, Suresh Kalmadi, was closed in April 2025 for "absence of proceeds of crime".

The main case against Kalmadi, concerning the award of a timing and scoring contract to a Swiss firm, remained stuck at the evidence stage after 662 court hearings over 14 years. He passed away in January at 81, having spent a decade and a half under a legal cloud that the courts were never able to convert into a conviction.

Policy decisions as criminal intent

What connects these outcomes is a single, recurring problem: treating policy decisions as evidence of criminal intent. In each case, the investigating agencies took a flawed government process, identified the officials and politicians associated with it, and assumed that the flaws themselves proved dishonesty. The courts, when they examined the actual evidence, found that assumption unsupported.

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The Bander coal block judgment illustrates this with particular clarity. The CBI alleged that AMR had secured the allocation by misrepresenting facts in its application. The court found that the application form itself was so poorly drafted that the terms "group companies" and "associate companies" had no precise meaning.

A response to an inherently ambiguous question, the court held, could not be the foundation for a cheating charge. The CBI alleged that Darda had used his position as an MP to lobby the Prime Minister's Office. The court found that his letters were never placed before the Screening Committee, never seen by any of its members, and that the allocation was made on entirely different terms from what he had sought.

When the SC cancelled 214 coal block allocations as arbitrary and illegal, it was a correct judgment about a defective policy. But a defective policy is one thing. A crime is another.

The CBI alleged that Rs 24.60 crore was paid to Darda as a bribe. The court pointed out a mathematical absurdity: the 26 per cent equity share that the family settlement allocated to anyone who helped secure a coal block was worth roughly Rs 50 lakh, given AMR’s net worth of approximately Rs 2 crore. The alleged payment was 50 times that figure. The key document linking Darda to the money was an unsigned letter that remained unproven under the law of evidence.

The acquittal of Gupta is the most telling part of the judgment. The CBI itself had filed a closure report finding insufficient evidence against him. He was then summoned as an accused by the court during the trial. After hearing all the evidence, Judge Sharma recorded that Gupta had been "honourably acquitted for lack of any evidence".

The Screening Committee’s decision, the court found, was collective and unanimous, signed by all members, including representatives of the state government and the Ministry of Steel. Gupta had retired before the allocation letter was even issued.

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To single him out for criminal liability was, in the court’s reasoning, to make him a scapegoat for a committee decision endorsed by everyone present.

Defective policy and crime not same

This is the heart of the matter. The coal allocation process between 1993 and 2010 was genuinely flawed. The Supreme Court said so in 2014, when it cancelled 214 coal block allocations as arbitrary and illegal. That was a correct judgment about a defective policy. But a defective policy is one thing. A crime is another. Criminal law demands proof that a specific person, acting with dishonest intent, deceived a specific decision-maker into conferring a specific benefit.

In the Bander case, the court found that every link in that chain was broken.

The same gap between policy failure and criminal proof brought down the 2G prosecution. The apex court cancelled 122 telecom licences in 2012, holding that the allocation process was arbitrary and unconstitutional. That was a ruling about the correct method of distributing a public resource. When the CBI tried to prove that Raja had personally orchestrated the underpricing of spectrum for corrupt gain, the trial court found no evidence of it.

None of this means that these controversies were baseless or that every acquitted individual was blameless. Policy failures of this magnitude demand accountability, and investigative agencies were right to probe them. But there is a difference between accountability and criminalisation.

Human cost of systemic dysfunction

When evidence of systemic dysfunction is treated as proof of individual guilt, the result is what India has witnessed in case after case: protracted trials and acquittals, with the human cost falling on the individuals caught in the process. Gupta, a retired IAS officer, spent 12 years as an accused in a case where the CBI itself had cleared him. Kalmadi died before the courts could resolve the main case against him. Even former telecom secretary Siddharth Behura was arrested, jailed and acquitted.

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The lesson is straightforward. When a government policy is badly designed, the correct response is institutional reform: better rules, greater transparency, competitive processes. The Supreme Court’s insistence on auction-based allocation of natural resources has been the most durable outcome of the "scam" era. Criminal prosecution is the correct response when there is evidence of personal dishonesty and corrupt gain.

When it is used as a substitute for policy reform, the result is destroyed reputations, wasted judicial time and, ultimately, acquittals. The courts have consistently recognised the difference between a bad policy and a guilty person. The investigating agencies would do well to learn the same lesson.