CWG scam: Kalmadi, aide Prasad denied bail

New Delhi, Jun 6 (PTI) Sacked CWG Organising Committee
chief Suresh Kalmadi and one of his aides, arrested in
connection with alleged irregularities in a Games-related
contract to a Swiss firm, were on Monday denied bail by a
Delhi court.
"The gravity of offence being of very serious nature
for causing loss to Government of India and unlawful gain to a
private vendor to the tune of more than Rs 95 crores, I am of
the view that accused is not entitled for bail at this stage,"
said Special Judge Talwant Singh while dismissing the bail
pleas of Kalmadi and former CWG OC official A S V Prasad.
The court also agreed with the apprehensions of CBI
that if enlarged on bail at this juncture, they might try to
influence witnesses.
"Kalmadi is an influential person who was exercising
full control over the OC as its chairman and most of the
witnesses are his appointees or the employees of the CWG
organising committee," the court said.
The court, meanwhile, remanded CWG organising panel's
former Treasurer M Jayachandran in CBI custody for three days
for his interrogation over his role in award of the contract
for installing the Timing-Scoring-Result (TSR) system to a
Swiss firm, Swiss Times Omega, at an exorbitant cost of Rs 141
crore, allegedly causing a loss of over Rs 95 crore to the
public exchequer.
The court also imposed a fine of Rs 25,000 each on two
promoters of Faridabad-based Gem International, P D Arya
and Anil Madan in connection with the case. While dismissing the former OC Joint Director-General
(Sports) Prasad's bail plea, the court added there exists the
possibility of his influencing the witnesses if enlarged on
bail at this stage as he was "exercising considerable clout in
the OC and he was very close to its Chairman Kalmadi."
The judge added most of the witnesses are employees of
OC, or the vendors or their employees who got contracts for
various works by persons close to him and they are very well
known to him, and accordingly, "it is not a fit case for grant
of bail" to Prasad.
While pronouncing the order, the court also mentioned
that bail applications of two other co-accused V K Verma and
Lalit Bhanot have already been rejected earlier.
Kalmadi was arrested along with Prasad and three
others on April 26 for their roles in awarding the contract to
the Swiss firm.
The court rejected Prasad's plea for bail on ground of
his ill health saying that nothing has been brought on record
to show his medical condition has been aggravated after he was
remanded to judicial custody.
Jayachandran was remanded to the CBI custody on Monday
on the plea that he had to be interrogated in custody to
unearth the money trail in the scam as besides being the
treasurer of the Organising Committee, he was also the
secretary of its sub-panel on finance that dealt with the
money transactions.
He had surrendered before the CBI court on May 3 and
was sent to Tihar jail under judicial custody.