New Delhi: A Hyderabad-based private firm
promoter, wanted for his alleged involvement in an illegal
award of a Commonwealth Games contract to a Swiss firm at
highly inflated costs, was on Thursday remanded by a Delhi court to
CBI custody for five days.
Hyderabad-based AKR Constructions' promoter AK Reddy,
involved in the award of the contract to Swiss Omega for
installing the Timing, Scoring and Result system for the
Games, was remanded to police custody till August 30 by
Special CBI Judge Dharmesh Sharma.
On the run since February this year, Reddy had
surrendered before a special CBI court last week. CBI had
sought his custody saying it needed him for his custodial
interrogation to unearth the money trail.
Reddy's counsel objected to the five-day custody terming
it as "mere formality" and said his client has already been
interrogated by CBI for three days and all the documents had
been seized much earlier.
While remanding Reddy to CBI custody, the court allowed
his counsel to meet him for fifteen minutes daily as long as
Reddy is in police custody.
Reddy was declared a proclaimed offender and had
surrendered in the court on August 20. His firm AKR
Constructions, which is also an accused in the case, was
sub-contracted the TSR work for the 2010 mega event by Gem
International which itself was a sub-contractor of Swiss
Timing.
The award of the contract allegedly at an inflated rate
had caused a loss of over Rs 90 crore to the public exchequer.
The court, meanwhile also extended till August 30 the
judicial custody of Kalmadi and other accused including, CWG
OC's Director General V K Verma, Secretary General Lalit
Bhanot, Director General (procurement) Surjit Lal, Joint
Director General (sports) A S V Prasad and Treasurer M
Jayachandran.
PTI
First Published: Thursday, August 25, 2011, 22:12