CWG scam: CBI court to frame charges against Suresh Kalmadi

New Delhi, Feb 3: A CBI court here will tomorrow frame charges against Pune MP

and nine other accused in the

Time Scoring and Results scam.

The CBI had chargesheeted the ten persons for awarding the contract to install time scoring equipment for the 2010 Commonwealth Games at an inflated rate to Swiss Timing Omega even though another company MSL Spain had offered to set up the Timing, Scoring and Results (TSR) system for just Rs 62 crore.

Apart from Kalmadi who was chairman of the Commonwealth Games Organising Committee (OC) and also served as the Indian Olympic Association president till last year, the CBI pressed for the conviction of former OC members including its secretary general Lalit Bhanot, director general VK Verma, director general (Procurement) Surjit Lal, joint director general (Sports) ASV Prasad and treasurer M Jayachandran.

Six other members of the OC misused their official positions, the CBI told the court.

The Swiss firm that benefitted from the illegally awarded contract has been named as accused in the scam along with two construction companies Gem International and AKR Constructions. The promoters of both Gem and AKR have also been chargesheeted.

On Dec 21, 2012, Judge Ravinder Kaur ordered "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 Prevention of Corruption Act" to be framed against "all the accused".

Since Swiss Timing Omega has not appeared before the court despite repeated summons, the judge said that the firm's "trial is separated".

Kalmadi's main contention is that he merely took some decisions in his capacity as the OC chairman. His counsel claimed that all these decisions were correct. However, the CBI pointed out that Kalmadi and the other officials surprisingly decided to give the contract to Swiss Timing Omega well before the company submitted a bid.

OneIndia News (with PTI inputs)