New Delhi: A former chief justice of India and a former chairperson of India’s Central Electricity Authority were among a team of heavyweight legal and policy experts whose opinions were submitted by Gautam Adani’s defence lawyers to the US Department of Justice as part of an extensive effort to persuade prosecutors to abandon their criminal case against the Indian billionaire.The disclosure is contained in a 15-page filing submitted on Tuesday by lawyers representing Gautam Adani, his nephew Sagar Adani and Adani Green Energy chief executive Vneet Jaain before Judge Nicholas Garaufis of the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York. The filing urges the court to approve the DOJ’s motion to dismiss the indictment with prejudice as well as the Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed settlement of its parallel civil case.But beyond seeking the court’s approval, the filing also provides the first detailed account of the months-long campaign mounted by Adani’s legal team to convince the DOJ that the prosecution should be abandoned. The effort began weeks after the SEC told the court in January that it had been unable to serve summons on Gautam and Sagar Adani in India for more than 14 months.According to the filing, Adani’s lawyers submitted a 118-page memorandum to the DOJ accompanied by a nine-page cover letter, followed by further written submissions and presentations over the next two months.“In total,” the lawyers wrote, “the Adani DOJ Defendants submitted nearly 500 pages of facts, law, expert testimony and argument to the DOJ between February 3, 2026 and April 17, 2026.”The submissions included around 200 pages of expert reports prepared by “a securities law professor at Harvard Law School, a former SEC Commissioner and Acting Chairman, a former Chief Justice of India and a former Chairperson of the Central Electricity Authority in India and Member of the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission.”The filing does not identify any of the experts by name. The Wire will update this story as and when responses are received from the remaining former chief justices.Separately, The Wire contacted 20 former chief justices of India. Some were approached by text message, others through email or landline calls. In several cases, messages were left with their staff.At the time of publication, six former chief justices had denied preparing any report or opinion for the Adani defence. “No. I have not given any Report or Opinion on the said or any connected issue,” former Chief Justice B.R. Gavai told The Wire. His immediate predecessor, former Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna, also denied any involvement.Former Chief Justice T.S. Thakur said, “I don’t think I have given any opinion in regard to any matter pending before any American court or authority.”Former Chief Justice R.M. Lodha said, “I have not given any opinion on this matter.” Similarly, former Chief Justice G B Pattanaik confirmed that he had “not given any such opinion”. Sources close to former Chief Justice N.V. Ramana also said he had not prepared any such opinion.The Wire will update this story as and when responses are received from the remaining former chief justices.The filing states that the submissions were made over “months of detailed and extensive communications and meetings” with prosecutors. According to the lawyers, the material demonstrated “multiple fatal defects in the government’s theories”, which they contend led the department to conclude that the indictment “suffers from four primary flaws”.While the letter does not specify the subject matter of each expert opinion, it offers a glimpse into at least one of the submissions made on Adani’s behalf.According to the filing, the unnamed former Chairperson of the Central Electricity Authority and former member of the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission addressed the prosecution’s central allegation that Adani Green secured power purchase agreements through bribes paid to Indian state officials.The lawyers told the court that the expert’s analysis showed the alleged illegal payments “supposedly took place at or around the same time as documented, lawful and transparent price reductions” that Adani Green and Azure Power Global had offered to Indian state electricity distribution companies to persuade them to execute solar power contracts.“The expert report explained that those price reductions were ordinary, lawful concessions that Adani Green offered to Indian state government power agencies to incentivise them to finalise these energy deals,” the lawyers wrote.The filing also launches a striking attack on Azure Power, whose former executives were among the defendants in the DOJ’s criminal prosecution.The lawyers argue that “the primary evidence in the Indictment appears to have been gathered from Azure, Adani Green’s competitor”. It went onto describe Azure as “a troubled company, with a history of alleged misconduct” whose witnesses have “limited, if any, firsthand knowledge of material facts and are of dubious credibility”.The original DOJ indictment and the parallel SEC complaint had portrayed the former Azure executives as alleged participants in the bribery scheme. According to prosecutors, after state utilities resisted signing power purchase agreements, Gautam Adani and Sagar Adani allegedly paid or promised hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes to Indian state officials.Prosecutors further alleged that Gautam Adani later met Azure executives to explain the alleged scheme and sought reimbursement for Azure’s one-third share of the alleged bribe payments through subsequent corporate transactions.The June 24 filing argues that the alleged illegal payments coincided with “documented, lawful, and transparent price reductions” offered to state utilities, which the defence says were ordinary commercial concessions intended to secure the agreements.As per a New York Times report last month, the decision by DOJ to drop the charges came after after Adani replaced his earlier US defence team with lawyers from Sullivan & Cromwell, led by the firm’s co-chair Robert Giuffra Jr., who also represents US President Donald Trump in his appeals against his New York criminal conviction and civil fraud judgment.The Wall Street Journal also reported earlier this month, citing seven people familiar with the matter, that Boris Epshteyn, one of Trump’s closest advisers and personal attorneys, became involved behind the scenes in Adani’s defence, although he neither appeared on court filings nor attended meetings with prosecutors. Epshteyn, the Adani Group and the DOJ all denied the newspaper’s account.Separately, Bloomberg reported this week that Gautam Adani held a previously undisclosed private meeting with Donald Trump Jr. in Ahmedabad while the criminal case was pending. According to Bloomberg, Jeet Adani had also met Trump Jr. at Mar-a-Lago last year. A spokesperson for Trump Jr. said both meetings had “zero to do” with the DOJ’s decision to drop the case.On May 14, Gautam Adani and Sagar Adani agreed to pay a combined $18 million to settle the SEC’s parallel civil case without admitting or denying the allegations.Four days later, Justice Department formally moved on May 18 to dismiss the criminal indictment against Gautam Adani, Sagar Adani and Vneet Jaain, telling Judge Garaufis only that it had decided, “in its prosecutorial discretion, not to devote further resources” to the prosecution. On the same day, Adani Enterprises separately agreed to pay $275 million to settle allegations by the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control that it had imported Iranian-origin liquefied petroleum gas in violation of US sanctions.