NEW DELHI, April 26 � Suresh Kalmadi was today attacked with a slipper outside a Delhi court which remanded him to CBI custody for eight days for his interrogation on charges of cheating, conspiracy and corruption in the award of Commonwealth Games contracts, reports PTI.
Kalmadi, who was arrested yesterday, was brought under tight security but a youth from Madhya Pradesh managed to jump over the policemen and hurl a slipper at him before he was produced in a special CBI court. The youth Kapil Thakur has been detained by the police.
Besides 66-year-old Kalmadi, Special CBI Judge Talwant Singh also remanded OC Joint Director General (Sport) A S V Prasad and OC Deputy Director General (Procurement) Surjit Lal till May 4 in CBI�s custody following their arrest yesterday.
The three were arrested for allegedly awarding illegal contract to a Swiss firm for Timing-Scoring-Result (TSR) system for the mega sporting event last year causing a loss of Rs 95 crore to the exchequer.
During the hearing, CBI sought 14 days� police remand of Kalmadi and his two associates, saying various incriminating documents regarding their role in awarding the contract have been collected and they need to be confronted with them.
�The accused are required to be confronted with and questioned regarding voluminous incriminating documents recovered from their official/residential premises as well as those of other suspects and records of OC, CWG.
�A number of documents are highly technical in nature and involve complicated financial niti-gritties,� the agency alleged. CBI further said that Kalmadi and his two associates were evasive and not co-operating with the probe agency. �The behaviour of the accused so far has remained evasive and non-cooperative and they are not revealing the true facts and circumstances of the criminal conspiracy leading to the award of TSR contract to Swiss Timing in a wrongful manner,� the CBI claimed.
The agency said that their custodial interrogation is required to unearth the multi-crore rupee scam.
�In order to unearth the multicrore scam, the names and roles of other associates/beneficiaries involved in the crime, use of defrauded/ill gotten amount by the accused persons, modus operandi adopted by the accused persons and role of their associates in India and abroad are required to be ascertained.
�The accused persons are also required to be confronted with each other in order to unearth the whole conspiracy in awarding of contract to Swiss Timing for TSR and the roles played by different persons in furtherance of the criminal conspiracy,� CBI added.
Opposing CBI�s plea, Kalmadi�s counsel Amit Desai said that no material has been placed by the agency on record to support their claim that his client was not co-operating with them during the probe.
Desai contended that Kalmadi, sacked as organising committee chairman of the CWG, was not involved in the process of awarding contracts. �Kalmadi was not involved in the process of awarding contracts. Whatever happened was done as per the procedures of the OC. The ultimate decisions were taken by the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports,� Desai said.
Desai noted that news regarding Kalmadi�s arrest came on news channels around 11.30 am yesterday but the CBI is showing that this was done only around 4.30 pm. He further added that in violation of their constitutional rights, the probe agency has produced them before the court after expiry of mandatory 24-hour period after the arrest.
Countering the defence counsel, CBI prosecutor V K Sharma said that their probe is to ascertain the trail of money in the scam. He, however, refused to disclose the entire evidence at this stage of investigation. �At this stage, we are not in a position to place and disclose the entire evidence in the open court,� Sharma said.
Kalmadi, suspended Congress MP from Pune, and the two other officials have been booked under Sections 120 B (conspiracy), 420 (cheating), 467 (forgery of valuable security), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating) and 471 (using as genuine a forged document) of the IPC besides other relevant sections of the Prevention of Corruption Act.