CWG case: court grants bail to three more accused

Three accused, including two former CWG Organising Committee (OC) officials, arrested for their alleged roles in a Games-related graft case, have been granted bail by a Delhi court on the ground of parity.

The court gave the relief to OC's former Joint Director General (Sports) A S V Prasad, former Director General (Procurement) Surjit Lal and promoter of Gem International P D Arya on bail saying four other accused, including sacked OC Chairman Suresh Kalmadi, have already been released on bail.

"After hearing both sides, without going into the merits of the case, I am inclined to grant bail to all the three accused persons (Prasad, Lal and Arya) on the ground of parity as other four accused persons are already on bail," Special CBI Judge Talwant Singh said.

"The accused shall not intimidate any witness after their release on bail. They are directed not to leave the country without obtaining prior permission from this court," the court said.

The court granted bail to Arya on a personal bond of Rs five lakh with two sureties of like amount while it released Lal and Prasad on personal bonds of Rs two lakh with two sureties each of the same amount.

The three accused had sought bail, claiming parity with Kalmadi and OC former Director General V K Verma who were given bail by the Delhi High Court on January 19.

The trio had submitted that their roles in the alleged conspiracy or in the attributed acts were not as serious as the roles of the accused who were already out on bail.

The CBI prosecutor, however, had opposed their bail pleas alleging Lal was booked for the offence of forgery and Arya was a "willful absconder".

The court, meanwhile, fixed the hearing on the bail pleas of two other co-accused, Gem International promoter A K Madan and A K R Constructions's onwer A K Reddy for tomorrow and February 2 respectively.

The court had on January 21 granted bail to two co-accused OC's former Secretary General Lalit Bhanot and OC's former treasurer M Jayachandran on the ground of parity.

CBI had filed its first chargesheet against Kalmadi and 10 others on May 20, 2011, in the graft case.

They have been accused of committing various offences in a case involving an award of a contract to a Swiss firm to install a Timing-Scoring-Result (TSR) system for the Games allegedly at an exorbitant rate, causing a loss of over Rs 90 crore to the state exchequer.