CWG street lighting scam: HC grants bail to three convicts

Two MCD officials and a private firm's director, who were sentenced to four years in jail in the first conviction in a 2010 Commonwealth Games scam case, were today granted bail by the Delhi High Court.
A bench of Justice Indermeet Kaur enlarged MCD Executive Engineer O P Mahla, the civic body's tender clerk Gurcharan Singh and private firm Sweka Powertech Engineering Pvt Ltd's Director J P Singh on bail asking them to furnish a personal bond of Rs 50,000 each to the satisfaction of the trial court.
Besides these three, the trial court had on September 2 awarded four-year imprisonment each to MCD Superintendent Engineer D K Sugan and Accountant Raju V and six years jail to the firm's Managing Director T P Singh.

The case relates to CWG street lighting scam which had caused a loss of Rs 1.4 crore to the exchequer.
O P Mahla, Gurcharan Singh and J P Singh were sentenced for various offences including criminal conspiracy, cheating and using forged documents as genuine of IPC and section 13 (1)(d)(criminal misconduct by public servant by corrupt means and abusing position) of Prevention of Corruption Act.
The court had held the allegations against the convicts as "serious", saying they had "conspired together and had cheated the MCD/GNCTD for forging the tender documents, a valuable security, and have also forged the tender opening register."

The firm was fined of Rs 1,10,000 by the court, which has also slapped a fine of Rs 30,000 each on the MCD officials, Rs 42,000 on T P Singh and Rs 22,000 on J P Singh.

The street lighting scam was one of the 10 graft cases relating to holding of the mega sports event in October 2010.
CBI had said in the charge sheet that tenders were invited by the civic agency in 2008 and various companies, including Sweka Powertech applied for it, while the MCD commissioner had approved only four companies.
As per the charge sheet, after opening of the tenders and announcing of the rates by Sugan in MCD, certain cuttings and interpolations in the tender papers of Sweka were made and the amount quoted by it was increased, leading to a loss of about Rs 1.43 crore to the state exchequer and corresponding wrongful gain to the convicts.