High Court has asked the contractors to deposit Rs 1 lakh each and granted protection till the Sessions court takes up their bail application
In a major setback to the investigation into the Rs 352-crore road scam, the Bombay High Court yesterday granted interim protection from arrest to two main contractors — Jitendra Kikavat, managing director of top ranking firm Mahavir Road Infrastructure Pvt Ltd, and Manish Kasliwal, director of KR Constructions — responsible for making substandard roads.
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The BMC had initiated action against the contractors based on samples of 34 substandard roads. Pic/Prabhanjan Dhanu
Senior counsel Subhash Jha and senior counsel Amit Desai, who represented Kasliwal and Kikavat, told Justice PN Deshmukh that their clients had appeared before the police 15 times, cooperated with the investigation and recorded their statements. There was no need for the police to take them into custody, argued the counsels. They said their clients had paid the BMC the loss it had suffered. Public prosecutor Sandeep Shinde opposed any interim relief to the contractors on the grounds that they are responsible for 200 below par roads in the city.
After hearing both sides, Justice Deshmukh asked each of the contractors to deposit Rs 1 lakh in court and granted them interim protection from arrest till the Sessions court decides their application for bail. Besides, Kikavat and Kasliwal were directed to appear before the police between July 20 and July 23 for further investigations.
The police have arrested 22 persons — two BMC chief engineers who ratified the paperwork, 10 third party auditors who checked the quality of works, and 12 private engineers and employee of the contractors. A lower court has granted bail to the auditors and the private engineers.
Besides the two big fish, four contractors — Nitin Shah of RPS Infra Projects, Nalin Gupta of J Kumar, Tejas Shah from Relcon Infraprojects, Narendra Madhani of RK Madhani Infrastructure — have been named in the FIR filed by the BMC at the Azad Nagar police station on April 27 this year. The BMC had initiated action against the contractors based on samples of 34 substandard roads.
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