Court summons Ministry of Sports for files relating to CWG

New Delhi: A special court conducting trial in the 2010 Commonwealth Games (CWG)-related corruption case in which Suresh Kalmadi and others are accused today directed Sports Ministry to produce some files pertaining to electronic scoring system used during the mega sporting event held here.

The court asked the ministry to produce the files after the then CWG Organising Committee Secretary General Lalit Bhanot, an accused in the case, moved a plea saying files pertaining to procurement of SUIS ASCOR (the scoring system) were needed for cross-examination of prosecution witness Sujit Panigrahi.

"... Summons be issued to the Sports Ministry of India to depute some responsible person to produce files (pertaining to procurement of SUIS ASCOR by the Ministry of Sports for CWG Delhi 2010)... on October 28," special CBI judge Ajay Kumar Jain said.

The court had on February 4, 2013, framed charges against sacked CWG Organising Committee chairman Kalmadi, Bhanot and eight others for allegedly cheating, conspiring and causing a loss of over Rs 90 crore to the exchequer in a games-related corruption case.

The court had framed charges under various provisions of the IPC and the Prevention of Corruption (PC) Act against the accused.

Besides cheating and criminal conspiracy, the accused have also been charged with alleged 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.

Besides Kalmadi and Bhanot, among the other accused in the case are OC's former Director General V K Verma, former Joint Director General (Sports) A S V Prasad, former Director General (Procurement) Surjit Lal and former Treasurer M Jayachandran.

They are no more associated with the sporting body.

Apart from the six, promoters of two construction firms - P D Arya and A K Madan of Faridabad-based Gem International and A K Reddy of Hyderabad-based AKR Constructions are also accused in the case. Swiss Timing Omega is also an accused in the case.

The accused were named in a charge sheet by the CBI for "illegally" awarding a contract to install Timing, Scoring and Results (TSR) system for the games to Swiss Timing at inflated rates causing a loss of over Rs 90 crore to the exchequer.

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. The accused have denied all the allegations levelled against them by CBI.