Court to frame charges against Kalmadi, others tomorrow

A Delhi court is likely to frame tomorrow charges against sacked CWG Organising Committee chief Suresh Kalmadi for allegedly cheating, conspiring, abusing his official position and causing a loss of over Rs 90 crore to public exchequer in in a games-related graft case.

Special CBI Judge Ravinder Kaur is slated to frame charges against Kalmadi and nine others, including former OC Secretary General Lalit Bhanot, under various provisions of the Indian Penal Code and the Prevention of Corruption (PC) Act.

The court on December 21 last year had ordered framing of charges against the accused and had fixed the matter for tomorrow for formally framing charges against them. 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 an 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 director general V K Verma, director general (Procurement) Surjit Lal, joint director general (Sports) A S V Prasad and treasurer M Jayachandran. They are no more associated with the sporting body.