Policemen at Suresh Kalmadi’s house during the CBI raid on Friday

New Delhi, Dec. 29: The CBI has summoned Suresh Kalmadi but he wants to keep his date with 2011 first.

The Commonwealth Games Organising Committee chief will be questioned next week over the scam related to the sporting event this October, as the agency has accepted a request from him to keep the grilling session after January 3.

The interrogation at the agency’s anti-corruption branch here will be the first formal questioning where Kalmadi’s statements will be recorded.

Last week, the agency had quizzed the Congress MP during raids on his home and offices but the exchange was informal and part of the wider search and seizure operations.

“Kalmadi has been summoned next week as he requested us not to call him before January 3. We have now gathered enough evidence against him and he will be grilled over the alleged irregularities in the run-up to the Games,” said a senior CBI officer.

Kalmadi is under the scanner for his alleged involvement in financial irregularities in the Queen’s Baton Relay in the UK, doctoring emails from the Indian high commission, buying equipment well above the market price, signing marketing contracts with huge commissions and allowing the Games budget to balloon.

According to the officer, the agency has taken permission from the Lok Sabha secretariat as Kalmadi is a member of the House. His close aides Lalit Bhanot and private secretary Manoj Bhore have been quizzed over the past two days.

“The duo were grilled over several issues including the award of contracts and also relating to the financial transactions made with the contractors in the run-up to the Commonwealth Games,” said the officer.

Last week, the agency raided the Congress MP’s homes and offices in New Delhi, Mumbai and Pune and put him through an eight-hour grilling. The agency seized his personal computers and other incriminating documents from his house in the capital. The raids were conducted following the agency’s claim that many “incriminating” documents had either been destroyed or smuggled out of the organising committee’s office.

“We are now planning to register a case for destroying evidence and hatching criminal conspiracy against some organising committee officials for tampering with documents and manipulating information,” said the officer.

In last week’s raids, the CBI had searched the Mumbai and Pune offices of Kalmadi’s younger brother Mukesh — a Congress MP— too, but left untouched the family business, the Sai Service showrooms. The Kalmadi brothers had self-avowedly built their fortune with Sai, which is the country’s largest Maruti dealership.

During the raids, the agency claimed to have seized an “incriminating letter” from Kalmadi’s home in Delhi and said it appeared that he was being blackmailed. The letter was written by a person who demanded Rs 4 crore from Kalmadi in exchange for a CD containing some damaging information about him.

The officer said they were trying to trace the source of the letter as Kalmadi had failed to give a satisfactory reply when confronted with it. “A probe is on to find out whether the letter was deliberately kept to misguide us,” the officer said.