PANJIM: With the special court to decide on former chief minister Digambar Kamat’s anticipatory bail application on Wednesday, his close aide Arthur D’Silva, also MMC Chairperson, was granted anticipatory bail on Tuesday.
Crime Branch (CB) did not contest the plea stating D’Silva’s police custody was not required at the current stage of investigation.
“The police custody of the accused applicant is not required as there is nothing to be recovered at his instance…,” it said.
D’Silva had admitted to the investigating officer that Kamat had tasked him with submitting and thereafter collecting RTI replies from the PWD office.
“Being an ex-employee and PWD contractor, he knows the principal chief engineer and other PWD officials making it easy to influence/manipulate the things,” CB stated in its application even as it did not oppose D’Silva’s plea.
CB had booked D’Silva for compelling government officers to furnish wrong information to facilitate Kamat. JICA surveyor Udaykumar Mandevalkar, who is charged under Section 201 of the IPC for destruction of evidence, had confessed that D’Silva compelled him to give the information urgently ‘as per his requirements’ in response to RTI application submitted on behalf of Kamat on August 10.
“Arthur compelled him to furnish false information regarding the file with notings concerning/relating to appointment of project management consultant for the JICA project, in order to facilitate accused Kamat to produce the same before the court during arguments in anticipatory bail application,” a CB official said.
