A special court on Monday took cognisance of the chargesheet of the CBI and summoned as accused Dilip Ray, former Union minister of state for coal during the erstwhile NDA government in 1999, in conne
A special court on Monday took cognisance of the chargesheet of the CBI and summoned as accused Dilip Ray, former Union minister of state for coal during the erstwhile NDA government in 1999, in connection with a coal block allocation case pertaining to the alleged irregularities in allocation of Brahmadiha coal block in Giridih in Jharkhand to Castron Technologies Ltd in 1999.
The court has summoned five, including two private firms, as accused in connection with the case. Besides Mr Ray, the court has also summoned Pradip Kumar Banerjee, who was the then additional secretary in the ministry of coal, Nitya Nand Gautam, who was the then adviser (projects) in the ministry, Castron Technologies Ltd, its director Mahendra Kumar Agarwalla and Castron Mining as accused in the case.
With this summon, Mr Ray has become the first minister of the NDA government who has been summoned as an accused in a coal scam case. The matter was being heard at the court of special CBI judge Bharat Parashar.
The court has fixed February 26 as the next date of hearing. The accused have been summoned for the alleged offences punishable under Section 120-B (criminal conspiracy), 420 (cheating) and 409 (criminal breach of trust) of the IPC and under the relevant provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act. The court summoned the accused after taking cognisance of the CBI’s chargesheet filed against them in the case.
In its order, the court said there were “prima facie”, enough evidence to summon them as accused in the case. “The public servants, in fact, actively connived with private parties involved so as to facilitate misappropriation of nationalised natural resources of the country by them,” the judge said in its order.
