QUOTING the Supreme Court ruling in the 2G spectrum case wherein it had granted bail to five corporate executives,the Delhi High Court today granted bail to former CWG Organising Committee chairman Suresh Kalmadi and former OC director general V K Verma. "Prima facie a case for offence under Section 467 IPC (forgery) is made out,the punishment prescribed for which is upto life imprisonment. Thus the accusations against the petitioners are serious in nature. However,the evidence to prove accusations is primarily documentary in nature,besides a few material witnesses. As held in Sanjay Chandra's case,if seriousness of the offence on the basis of punishment provided is the only criteria,the Courts would not be balancing the constitutional rights but rather recalibrating the scales of justice," said Justice Mukta Gupta. The court also rejected the CBI's argument that the accused should not be granted bail as witnesses would be intimidated. "The evidence on record that in the past witnesses were intimidated does not prima facie show that there is any likelihood of threat to the prosecution witnesses. I find no merit in the contention of the learned counsel for the CBI that the mere presence of the petitioners at large would intimidate the witnesses," said Justice Gupta. While allowing their plea for bail which cited the Supreme Court's judgement in the 2G case wherein it held that "bail is rule and jail is exception",Justice Gupta said: "Though the learned trial court has directed that the trial be conducted on day-to-day basis,however,in the main chargesheet itself 49 witnesses have been cited. Thereafter,further witnesses have been cited in the two supplementary chargesheets. Thus,the trial is likely to take time." The judge added that "there is no allegation that the petitioners are likely to flee from justice and will not be available for the trial." "The allegations are of having committed economic offences which have resulted in loss to the state exchequer. Whether it was a case of exercise of discretion for ensuring the best quality or a case of culpability will be decided during the course of trial. There is no allegation of money trail to the petitioners. There is no evidence of the petitioners threatening the witnesses or interfering with evidence during investigation or trial. There is no allegation that any other FIR has been registered against the petitioners," said the court,adding that the case was fit to grant bail to the applicants. The court asked Kalmadi and Verma to furnish a bail bond of Rs 5 lakh each and two sureties of the same amount,besides directing them not to leave the country without permission. Kalmadi,Verma and nine others have been accused of awarding a contract to a Swiss firm to install a Timing-Scoring-Result (TSR) system for the Games at an exorbitant rate,causing a loss of over Rs 90 crore to the state exchequer. While Kalmadi was arrested on April 25 last year,Verma was arrested on February 23,2011.
