CWG scam: Suresh Kalmadi charged with cheating, pleads not guilty

Kalmadi, however, has pleaded not guilty.

Special CBI Judge Ravinder Kaur framed charges under various provisions of the IPC and the Prevention of Corruption (PC) Act against Kalmadi and other accused, including OC Secretary General Lalit Bhanot, in the case.

Besides cheating and criminal conspiracy, the accused have also been charged with offences relating to forgery and use of forged documents as genuine, criminal intimidation, destruction of evidence of the IPC and section 13(1)(d) read with section 13(2) (criminal misconduct by public servants) of the PC Act.

After framing of charges, the court fixed February 20 for recording of evidence in the case. The judge said that the evidence will be recorded on a day-to-day basis barring Monday and Friday.

The accused were chargesheeted 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 exchequer.

Special CBI Judge Ravinder Kaur had on January 10 posted for Monday the framing of charges in the case. 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.

The court, while ordering framing of charges against the accused, had said that as 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 court had also said that substantial charges of misusing official position have been made out against the six former OC officials, who were public servants.

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.

CBI counsel V K Sharma had argued that Kalmadi and others had decided to award the contract for installing the TSR system for the CWG to Swiss Timing even before the firm had bid for it.

Kalmadi's counsel, however, had argued that the facts given in the CBI's chargesheet were contrary to the documents which the agency had filed in the court.

Kalmadi had told the court that he was only doing the work assigned to him as the OC chairman and nothing wrong was done by him in the entire process.

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