A special anti-corruption court in Panaji granted anticipatory bail to Arthur Silva, the chairperson of the Margao Municipal Council, charged with causing evidence to disappear in the louis Berger International Bribery case. Silva is also a close aide of former Chief Minister Digambar Kamat, who represents Margao constituency and who is a prime suspect in the case.
Silva had filed for anticipatory bail fearing his arrest after the prosecution booked a case against him for allegedly forcing a Public Information Officer to give wrong information under the RTI Act to an application filed by Kamat that related to the case. The court granted interim bail after the prosecution said that Silva’s custody wasn’t needed in connection with the investigation and his custody wouldn’t be necessary and didn’t raise any objections to him being granted bail.
Orders on Kamat’s interim bail are expected to be pronounced on Wednesday. Kamat has been on interim bail while his anticipatory bail application was being heard. The prosecution has made a case that Kamat received more than Rs1 crore in bribes in multiple instalments, including one at the official residence of the Chief Minister, in exchange for issuing work orders and for the consultancy project to louis Berger in 2010, when he was heading a Congress-led coalition Government. Kamat, along with Churchill Alemao, a former Minister of public works and ex-CM and other Government officials have been accused of allegedly accepting a $976,630 bribe in 2010 from officials of US-based louis Berger construction consultancy firm.
Several persons including ex-employees and consortium partners have testified that they have paid bribes and/or have witnessed both Kamat and Churchill receiving bribes
Crime Branch officials insisted they wanted police custody for Kamat, in order to track down a copy of a crucial JICA file which has ‘disappeared’ and which the officials claimed was with the former Chief Minister.
Those who have been arrested so far are Alemao, Mohanty, Wachasundar director of the JICA funded project and an alleged hawala dealer Raichand Soni. Mohanty was released on bail on Monday.
All the accused were arrested in August, a few days after media reports, first emanating from the US, brought to light the bribery scandal quoting US Justice department documents.