Decision on Digambar on Fri, Churchill hearing begins on Thu

PRASAD SHET KANKONKAR, PANAJI | 02 September 2015 23:13 IST

Friday is the D Day for former chief minister Digambar Kamat. It however begins for former PWD minister Churchill Alemao, tomorrow, on Thursday – for both in the high court on their bail matters.

The high court would decide on Friday the maintainability of the petition filed by crime branch of Goa police, challenging the CBI court verdict on granting Kamat the anticipatory bail.

The single bench of Bombay high court at Panaji has already heard arguments on the petition last week.

Even before merits of the petition were taken up, arguments were held on whether the petition could sustain when the police have not even technically arrested and released the former CM in the Louis Berger bribery case.

The crime branch of Goa police has challenged the order under section 439 (2) of CrPC.

Kamat has urged the high court to reject the petition since the section requires to first arrest the accused to complete the formality of the bail order before challenging the order.

The crime branch has however vehemently opposed this argument, stating that no such formality requires to be completed, citing quite a few judgements.

Learned lawyers, on the other hand, feel that challenging the order under section 439 (2) itself is wrong when the high court has overriding powers to decide on lower court decision under section 482 of CrPC.

 

Any decision – for or against the petition – could also result into either of the affected party rushing to the Supreme Court on this technical issue, even before the high court decides whether to grant Kamat anticipatory bail or not.

This two-day long hearing had postponed Alemao’s petition, challenging the CBI court’s order, rejecting his bail application twice.

Alemao was arrested on 5 August and was remanded to judicial custody after spending eight days in the police lock up. He is still in the jail.

His bail application was rejected on 17 August by the CBI court while the same court had granted anticipatory bail to Kamat on 19 December.

He had thus filed a fresh bail plea, which was rejected once again on 24 August.  

Both Kamat and Alemao Kamat are facing a serious charge of accepting huge amount of bribe from Louis Berger International Inc., the US-based consultancy firm.

The firm has admitted before the Department of Justice in New Jersey of paying bribes of total Rs six crore to ‘a’ minister and government officials in Goa to get the consultancy contract of JICA project.

Louis Berger was selected for consultancy to implement the project, worth Rs 1031 crore, funded by Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

 


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