CWG: Court to frame charges against Kalmadi, others on Feb 4

Judge defers framing of charges, says needs more time to go through records

A Delhi court today fixed February 4 for framing charges against the sacked CWG Organising Committee chairman Suresh Kalmadi for allegedly cheating, conspiring and causing a loss of over Rs 90 crore to the public exchequer in a Games-related graft case.

Special CBI Judge Ravinder Kaur deferred the framing of charges, saying she needs more time to go through the entire records of the case before passing any order.

The special judge has taken charge of this court on January 2 after the earlier judge, who had ordered framing of charges, was transferred. The case was fixed for today for formally framing of charges against all the accused.

The court had on December 21, 2012 passed the order on framing of charges under various provisions of the IPC and the Prevention of Corruption (PC) Act against Kalmadi and nine others, including former OC Secretary General Lalit Bhanot.

Besides cheating and conspiracy, the accused will also be charged with the offences of forgery under the IPC and criminal misconduct by public servants under the PC Act.

"Charges under section 120B (criminal conspiracy), read with 201 (destruction of evidence), 420 (cheating), 467, 468, 471 (relating to forgery), 506 (criminal intimidation) of the IPC and section 13(1)(d) read with section 13(2) (criminal misconduct by public servants) of the PC Act is ordered to be framed against all the accused," the court had said.

The accused have been charge sheeted by the CBI for "illegally" awarding a contract to install Timing, Scoring and Results (TSR) system for the 2010 CWG to Swiss Timing at inflated rates causing a loss of over Rs 90 crore to the public exchequer.

Besides Kalmadi and Bhanot, the other accused in the case are OC's former Director General V K Verma, former Director General (Procurement) Surjit Lal, former Joint Director General (Sports) A S V Prasad and former Treasurer M Jayachandran. They are no more associated with the sporting body.

The court had said substantial charges of misusing official position have been made out against six former 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 International and A K Reddy of Hyderabad-based AKR Constructions are also accused in the case.

Swiss Timing Omega is also an accused in the case.

The court, while ordering framing of charges against the accused, had said that as accused Swiss Timing Omega, which was allegedly awarded the contract at exorbitant rates, is not appearing in the court despite proper service of summons, its "trial is separated."

The CBI had alleged that Kalmadi and others had rejected Spanish firm MSL's much lower bid of Rs 62 crore and awarded the contract to Swiss Timing Omega, causing a loss of over Rs 90 crore to the exchequer.