Suresh Kalmadi, the chairman of the Commonwealth Games Organising Committee, was on Tuesday pushed to the wall as the government asked him to immediately sack his two top aides and slammed him for forging an Indian High Commission letter to justify huge sums paid to a dubious one-man London company of Ashish Patel alias Ash Patel alias Ashish Kumar.

External Minister S M Krishna summoned the 66-year old Congress MP on Tuesday morning to show him the letter that Raju Sabastian, a junior assistant in the high commission in London, had written, with no recommendation or even reference to Patel's company for giving a contract during the Queen Baton Relay in London last October.

An embarrassed Kalmadi, a four-time Rajya Sabha member and a Lok Sabha member for the third term who had tried to justify Rs 3.28 crores paid off to Patel's company by flaunting Sabastian's alleged recommendation letter, quickly set up a three-member panel headed by Jarnail Singh, the CEO of the Organising Committee, and a retired IAS officer, to probe who forged the said letter.

He also convened an emergency meeting of the Organising Committee's Executive Board here on Thursday in response to Indian Olympic Association (IOA) secretary-general Randhir Singh's demand to discuss various issues related to the Games, including the corruption charges. Kalmadi is himself the IOA president and hence Singh's demand came to him as a bolt from the blue.

Krishna called Kalmadi to the Foreign Office and showed him a six-page letter of Nalin Surie, the Indian high commissioner in London, about the Queen's Baton Rally scam and how the Organising Committee has tried to slur the high commission's name by forging a letter from one of its junior employees.

In his letter, Surie has narrated events from April 1, 2010 to July 30, 2010 about the visits, telephone calls and pressures brought on the diplomats in the high commission as also communications from the Royal Revenue Service about suspicion of scam in the huge payments made to a nondescript London firm.

In a terse confidential letter dashed off to Kalmadi on August 1, sports secretary Sindhu Shree Khullar sought immediate removal of T S Darbari, joint director-general, and Sanjay Mohindroo, deputy director-general technology and marketing, because of their alleged involvement in money paid to Patel's company without any contract.

"You will appreciate that with the Commonwealth Games just two months away, matters such as the above raise questions about the standards of priority and integrity of officers in the Organising Committee. They tarnish the image of the Games and adversely affect its credibility," the letter said while strongly advising to address them immediately.

Sources said the Prime Minister's Office asked the sports secretary to open office on Sunday and shoot off the letter to Kalmadi as prime minister Manmohan Singh is concerned over recurrent reports of one scam after another in the name of the Games. The PMO has also urged cabinet secretary K M Chandrasekhar, who is keeping tabs on the Games expenditures and got extension in service specially for this purpose, to take a rundown of all Games-related contracts signed by various government agencies for preparations for the CWG.

Kalmadi, who flaunts his profession as a 'businessman' in his biodata in the Lok Sabha records, had handpicked the two aides, Darbari and Mahindroo, from the business world for their management and marketing expertise, to head two key posts in the Organising Committee and defended them whenever they were faulted for irregularities, including an alleged smuggling case.

Sensing the trouble brewing after the British government's Customs and Revenue Department started its probe against the huge sums coming into the bank account of Patel's company from the Organising Committee, Mohindroo is reported to have already taken a relieving letter and fled India. Instead of showing the door to Darbari, Kalmadi preferred to institute an internal probe into the dealings with Patel's company.

In her letter to Kalmadi, the sports secretary has referred to the alleged involvement of Darbari and Mohindroo "in some alleged irregularities in payments to a UK company," pointing out that "this matter has been referred to the government by the HM Revenue and Customs Department of the UK through the Indian High Commission in London."

This is not her first stinker to Kalmadi, expressing the government's concern over Darbari's dubious track record, as she had also written on February 11 to sack him immediately, relieving him of all his charges.

In her latest letter, Khullar also referred to an April 20 letter of the joint secretary of the sports ministry objecting to Darbari's inclusion in the team going to Australia for the Queen's Baton Relay while the case regarding the alleged irregularities under the Customs Act was still pending against him.

The joint secretary subsequently wrote on April 28, expressing concern that Darbari was sent to Australia on official work without prior approval of the sports ministry when Kalmadi defended his dispatch to Australia through a communication on April 23 on the ground that he can not be divested of his charge in the Organising Committee since there is no Customs case or charge against him.

The sports secretary has asserted that a Customs case was pending against Darbari, following the arrest of K D Mani, a passenger, at Kochi airport for carrying a platinum ring with a diamond worth Rs 30 lakh, the bill of which was in Darbari's name. The ring was bought in Dubai.

Khullar's letter says the Revenue Department has now confirmed that summons were issued to Darbari on the basis of the details furnished by the passenger and that he expressed inability to appear at Kochi on medical grounds, requesting that his statement be recorded in Delhi.

"The request was acceded to and his statement was recorded by Superintendent, Customs, on April 5, 2010. Further investigation is in progress to check the veracity of the statement of Darbari," the letter said quoting the Revenue Department.

See attached: sports secretary Khullar's letter to Kalmadi.