Seven accused in Adarsh scam out on bail

A special CBI court on Tuesday granted bail to seven of the nine accused in the multi-crore Adarsh Housing Society scam as the investigative agency failed to file its chargesheet within the stipulated time of 60 days after arrest. HT reports.

A special CBI court on Tuesday granted bail to seven of the nine accused in the multi-crore Adarsh Housing Society scam as the investigative agency failed to file its chargesheet within the stipulated time of 60 days after arrest.

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The seven accused — former finance secretary Pradeep Vyas, former deputy secretary in urban development department PV Deshmukh, brigadier (retd) MM Wanchoo, retired defence estates officer RC Thakur, major general (retd) AR Kumar, major general (retd) TK Kaul and former Congress politician Kanhaiyyalal Gidwani — were granted bail on a surety of Rs 5 lakh each.

The court also directed the accused to cooperate with the agency and report to the CBI office in Mumbai on Tuesdays and Thursdays every week. The scam pertains to alleged irregularities in construction and allotment of apartments in the 32-storey building, originally meant for families of Kargil war heroes, in South Mumbai’s upmarket Colaba area.

All the accused have been charged with criminal conspiracy and various sections under the Prevention of Corruption Act and Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Act.

On Monday, the CBI had opposed bail to the seven accused stating it was still investigating the case and additional stringent charges such as criminal breach of trust by a public servant and forgery — which would attract life imprisonment — were likely to be slapped on them.

Prosecutor Bharat Badami told the court they had collected samples of signature of the accused and this had been sent for analysis.

In such cases, the time limit for filing chargesheet would be 90 days, and not 60, he argued.

However, the court rejected the contentions of CBI counsel and granted bail to the accused.