Thaindian News

New Delhi, June 15 (IANS) A special CBI court here Wednesday dismissed the bail plea of a former financial official of the Commonwealth Games (CWG) Organising Committee (OC) in a case of alleged forgery in the award of a contract.

M. Jayachandran has been accused by the Central Bureau of Investigation of manipulating the finance committee meeting minutes related to the contract for a timing, scoring and result (TSR) system for the October 2010 sporting event.

CBI Special Judge Talwant Singh said: “It is clear that Jayachandran was deeply involved in the entire conspiracy hatched with other co-accused for awarding TSR system contract to Swiss Timing Ltd., Switzerland, at exorbitant rate by eliminating competition, and thereby causing huge loss of more than Rs.95 crore to exchequer and providing unlawful gain to private party.”

“The accused is a highly influential person who has retired as IRS (Indian Revenue Service) officer and had worked at various high positions in the OC,” said the court.

The court added that if Jayachandran was released on bail he may influence the witnesses in the case, who were his former junior colleagues. “Therefore, no bail is made out,” said the court.

The court also dismissed the anticipatory bail plea of A.K. Reddy, promoter of Hyderabad-based firm A.K.R. Constructions.

“Keeping in view the facts and circumstances of the case, past conduct of Reddy was non-cooperative and he never participated in the investigation,” said the court.

“Reddy did not appear before the court even after the charge sheet was filed, which was well within his knowledge. No possible explanation is coming forwarding in respect to Rs.12.88 crore transferred by Jem International, a company of the applicant, in respect of the temporary cabling work done.”

“It is not a fit case of grant of anticipatory bail,” said the court, adding that Reddy will have to pay Rs.25,000 fine for recalling its order for initiating proceedings for declaring him as a proclaimed offender.

The probe agency accused Jayachandran, OC’s former joint director general of accounts and finance, of being “guilty of wilful and repeated falsification of records” and also of not revealing the true facts about the false statement made by former OC director general V.K. Verma regarding the budgetary provision of the TSR system contract.

Jayachandran earlier contended that he could not be held responsible for the alleged wrong doings in the TSR system contract as he was just the secretary of the OC’s financial committee and the award of contract was the decision of the members of the committee.