Jharkhand firm, 2 directors convicted in coal scam

Jharkhand Ispat Pvt Ltd and its two directors were on Monday convicted by a CBI court in Delhi in connection with a coal scam case for acquiring a coal block in Jharkhand on the basis of false documents. It is the first case pertaining to coal block allocation scam in which the special court, exclusively dealing with all the related matters, has held a firm and its two directors guilty.

Special CBI judge Bharat Parashar while convicting JIPL and its two directors R.C. Rungta and R.S. Rungta noted that the representations made by the accused before government authorities, including the ministry of coal and screening committee, were “per se false” and they were made with a dishonest intention. The court has convicted them for offences of criminal conspiracy and cheating under the IPC and ordered that Mr Rungta and Mr Rungta be taken into custody. “The representations made by the accused persons were per se false and it does not require any far-fetched arguments to conclude that the same were made with a dishonest intention as they wanted to present a better status/stage of their preparedness towards establishing the end use project,” the court said.

The court also noted that the accused induced the screening committee and the coal ministry into believing that their representations were true. The court after convicting them fixed March 31 for hearing the argument on quantum of sentence in the case.

The court had on March 21 last year framed charges against them for the alleged offences punishable under sections 120-B (criminal conspiracy) read with 420 (cheating), 467 (forgery of valuable security), 468 (forgery for the purpose of cheating) and 471 (using a forged document as genuine) of IPC. All the accused had pleaded not guilty and claimed trial, while refuting the allegations levelled against them by CBI. In its chargesheet, CBI had alleged that during the probe, it was found that JIPL had “grossly misrepresented” a number of aspects before the Ministry of Steel (MoS) and the Ministry of Coal (MoC) to inflate their claim and thereby induced the MoC officers and the screening committee to allocate the coal block to them. CBI alleged that JIPL along with three other firms, Electro Steel Casting Ltd, Adhunik Alloys and Power Ltd and Pawanjay Steel and Power Ltd, was jointly allocated North Dhadu coal block by 27th and 30th screening committee. CBI had alleged that no efforts were made either by the screening committee to verify the claims made by the applicant firm and that MoS also did not develop any methodology for assessment of the applicant companies. It had claimed that some records of MoC relating to the case were stated to be missing and a separate preliminary enquiry has been registered by the CBI.