Five corporate executives arrested last month and accused of various offences in the spectrum scam will continue to stay in Tihar jail for now, with the Delhi High Court rejecting their bail petitions on Monday. Justice Ajit Bharihoke pointed to the gravity of the accusations and the possibility of the accused trying to interfere with justice while rejecting the petitions, calling all five bail applications ?baseless?.

Of the five, two are promoters ? Sanjay Chandra is MD at Unitech, India?s second largest realty firm and Vinod Goenka is MD at Mumbai-based DB Realty. The remaining three are senior executives of Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG) ? group managing director Gautam Doshi and senior vice-presidents Hari Nair and Surendra Pipara.

The five were arrested and remanded in judicial custody on April 20 over their alleged roles in the spectrum scam, with the special trial court rejecting their bail pleas.

They had subsequently moved the Delhi High Court in appeal. Senior advocate UU Lalit, the Supreme Court-appointed CBI prosecutor opposed the bail pleas, saying corporate bodies and individuals were direct beneficiaries of the spectrum deal and they were involved in a conspiracy along with former telecom minister A Raja.

Arguments by top-notch lawyers ? including Ram Jethmalani who defended Chandra ? that their clients were cooperating with the investigation and there were no reasons to keep them behind bars clearly did not impress the judge.

?Taking into account the gravity of the accusation against the petitioners, a reasonable possibility of their interfering with the process of justice by tampering with the evidence, I do not deem it appropriate to release the petitioners on bail at this stage when further investigation in the matter is going on and the trial is yet to begin,? the 34-page order said. So far, 13 accused have been arrested in the 2G scam case and are facing trial.

DMK party chief M Karunanidhi’s daughter Kanimozhi and Kalaignar TV managing director, Sharad Kumar were the latest to be arrested following the rejection of their bail pleas on May 20.

Interestingly, Kanimozhi also moved the High Court for bail on Monday.

The first to be arrested were Raja and his former aides Siddhartha Behura and RK Chandolia, followed by Swan Telecom promoter Shahid Usman Balwa. Later Balwa’s brother Asif Iqbal and a DB Realty executive Rajiv Agarwal were also arrested.

Only one accused ? Cineyug Films director Karim Morani ? has not been arrested so far as the court has so far exempted him from personal appearance on health grounds.

However, on Monday, even Morani suffered a setback with the court rejecting his plea for an anticipatory bail. He has now been asked to appear before the trial court on Tuesday.

The five corporate executives were charge-sheeted along with Raja, Behura and Chandolia on April 2. The charges are that they all colluded to manipulate the procedure for allocation of spectrum, causing the exchequer a loss of R30,984 crore.

While Swan and Unitech Wireless were beneficiaries of telecom licences and spectrum, ADAG companies are charged with acting as a front for Swan Telecom, which was a violation of the cross-holding norms in India’s telecom sector.