The Supreme Court on Friday refused to entertain the bail plea of former Secretary General of CWG Organising Committee Lalit Bhanot, arrested for his alleged role in awarding a Games-related contract at inflated rates.

A bench of justices J M Panchal and H L Gokhale, however, allowed Bhanot to approach the appropriate court for relief and clarified the court would not get influenced by observations made by the Delhi High Court which had earlier rejected his bail plea. The bench allowed Bhanot to withdraw his petition.

Bhanot was arrested on February 23 this year along with former Director General of CWG OC V K Verma for allegedly awarding the contract for installing Timing, Scoring and Result systems for the Games to a Swiss firm, Swiss Timing, causing a loss of over 90 crore rupees to the public exchequer.