Ram was sent to the same prison in New Delhi where another disgraced former telecoms minister, A. Raja, has been held since February last year while he awaits trial over a separate corruption case. Last month, Delhi High Court upheld a lower court's 2002 ruling that Ram and the two officials defrauded the state exchequer by awarding a contract to supply telecom equipment to a private firm at a higher rate than stipulated.
Ram is also linked to a separate financial scandal in which a court in 2009 sentenced him to three years in jail but he had been bailed. Raja has been accused of selling second-generation (2G) telecom licences in 2008 at throwaway prices in return for kickbacks. National auditors estimate that the losses from the cut-price sales could have cost the national treasury up to $40 billion.