A day after the Goa Police Crime Branch filed a chargesheet against “prime conspirator” Digambar Kamat, a former Goa Chief Minister and senior Congress leader, in connection with the multi-crore bribery louis Berger case, Chief Minister laxmikant Parsekar on Friday said that the development, although delayed, was not politically motivated.
Speaking to The Pioneer, Parsekar also said, that the delay in framing charges against Kamat in connection with the bribery case, which was registered as a First Information Report by the Crime Branch in 2015, was due to desperate petitioning to the judiciary by Kamat to avoid arrest.
“I feel it is delayed, but not for any political reason... He has filed cases right up to the Supreme Court to avoid arrest. That is why perhaps it has taken time for the police to file the charge-sheet. law will take its own course and time," Parsekar said.
According to the charge-sheet filed by the police, Kamat was heading a Congress-led coalition Government, when he is alleged to have accepted a part of a $976,630 worth bribe from louis Berger officials, in order to award the consultancy company, a contract to oversee the implementation of a Rs 1,031 crore sewerage and drinking water augmentation project funded by a Japan-based international funding agency.
According to the charge-sheet filed by Crime Branch, Kamat is alleged to have received kickbacks to the tune of Rs 1.2 crore, a charge which Kamat has rejected on numerous occasions.
Former Public Works Department minister Churchill Alemao has already been arrested and charge-sheeted by the Crime Branch in the same case, in which several senior officials of the State Government, top management personnel of louis Berger, a hawala operator and a close political aide of Kamat have also been arrested.
The former Chief Minister has been chargesheeted for criminal conspiracy (120-b) 201 (tampering with evidence) of the Indian Penal Code and other sections of the Prevention of Corruption Act, even as the Enforcement Directorate in Goa has also started a separate probe into the louis Berger bribery case.