Indian Bharti, Vodafone raided in telecom probe

NEW DELHI, Nov 19 (AFP): Indian police Saturday raided offices of two of the nation's biggest telecom firms, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Essar, in a widening probe into alleged wrongdoing in the awarding of mobile spectrum. India's top federal police force, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), searched offices of Bharti Airtel and the Indian unit of Vodafone, part of Britain's Vodafone Group, as well as senior former government telecom officials, a CBI spokeswoman told the news agency. The searches involved alleged irregularities in the distribution of second-generation (2G) mobile spectrum between 2001 and 2003 when the previous Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party was in power, the spokeswoman said. "The searches were in connection with allegations that have been framed," she said. The raids were part of an increasingly sprawling police investigation into awarding of spectrum that has engulfed the current Congress-led government and threatens to taint the previous BJP government which was in office until 2004.