A Delhi court is likely to framecharges against sacked CWG Organising Committee chairmanSuresh Kalmadi and others tomorrow for allegedly cheating,conspiring and causing a loss of over Rs 90 crore to theexchequer in a Games-related corruption case.
Special CBI Judge Ravinder Kaur had on January 10 postedfor tomorrow the framing of charges in the case also involvingformer OC Secretary General Lalit Bhanot as an accused.
The court had on December 21, 2012 passed the order onframing of charges under various provisions of the IPC and thePrevention of Corruption (PC) Act against Kalmadi and nineother accused in the case.
Besides cheating and conspiracy, the accused will also becharged with the offences of forgery under the IPC andcriminal misconduct by public servants under the PC Act.
"Charges under section 120B (criminal conspiracy), readwith 201 (destruction of evidence), 420 (cheating), 467, 468,471 (relating to forgery), 506 (criminal intimidation) of theIPC and section 13(1)(d) read with section 13(2) (criminalmisconduct by public servants) of the PC Act is ordered to beframed against all the accused," the court had said.
The accused have been chargesheeted by the CBI for"illegally" awarding a contract to install Timing, Scoring andResults (TSR) system for the 2010 CWG to Swiss Timing at aninflated rates causing a loss of over Rs 90 crore to thepublic exchequer.
Besides Kalmadi and Bhanot, the other accused in the caseare OC's former Director General V K Verma, former DirectorGeneral (Procurement) Surjit Lal, former Joint DirectorGeneral (Sports) A S V Prasad and former Treasurer MJayachandran. They are no more associated with the sportingbody.
The court had also said that substantial charges ofmisusing official position have been made out against sixformer OC officials, who were public servants.
Apart from the six, promoters of two construction firms -P D Arya and A K Madan of Faridabad-based Gem Internationaland A K Reddy of Hyderabad-based AKR Constructions are alsoaccused in the case. Swiss Timing Omega is also an accused inthe case.
The court, while ordering framing of charges against theaccused, had said that as accused Swiss Timing Omega, whichwas allegedly awarded the contract at exorbitant rates, is notappearing in the court despite proper service of summons, its"trial is separated."
The CBI had alleged that Kalmadi and others had rejectedSpanish firm MSL's much lower bid of Rs 62 crore and awardedthe contract to Swiss Timing Omega, causing a loss of over Rs90 crore to the exchequer.
During the arguments on charges, CBI counsel V K Sharmahad argued that Kalmadi and others had decided to award thecontract for installing the TSR system for the CWG to SwissTiming even before the firm had bid for it.
Kalmadi's counsel, however, had argued that the factsgiven in the CBI's charge sheet were contrary to the documentswhich the agency had filed in the court.
Kalmadi had told the court that he was only doing thework assigned to him as the OC chairman and nothing wrong wasdone by him in the entire process.
The counsel appearing for other accused had also opposedthe allegations levelled against them by the CBI.