New Delhi | Jagran News Desk: Delhi High Court has suspended the three-year jail term awarded to former union minister Dilip Ray by a special CBI court on Monday in a 1999 coal block allocation scam. Ray's plea for suspension of jail term came up for hearing before the single-judge bench of Justice Suresh Kumar Kait“The sentence has been suspended and the case has been fixed for hearing on November 23,” Indian Express quoted Ray's advocate Chandra Prakash as saying.
Ray was convicted on Monday for his alleged role in the allocation of 105.153 hectares of a coal mining area in Jharkhand’s Giridh district in favour of Castron Technologies Limited by 14th Screening Committee of the Ministry of Coal in 1999.
While sentencing Ray, the special CBI court had observed that he “abused his official position” as his decision of “relaxation of policy without any logical or legal basis amounts to gross abuse of his powers…”.
Besides Ray, two former senior officials of the Ministry of Coal -- Pradip Kumar Banerjee, the then Additional Secretary and Nitya Nand Gautam, former advisor (Projects), Castron Technologies Limited, its director Mahendra Kumar Agarwalla and Castron Mining Limited have also been found guilty.
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As many as 51 witnesses were examined in the case. The prosecution had argued that the facts and circumstances of the case clearly pointed to the hatching of a criminal conspiracy by the private parties and the public servants involved in the process of allocation of impugned coal block.
It was submitted that Brahmadiha coal block was not a nationalised coal mine and was not included by CIL or its subsidiary companies in the identified list of captive coal blocks to be allocated by the Ministry of Coal.
Senior Public Prosecutor AP Singh had told the court that as Brahmadiha coal block was not an identified captive coal block to be allocated to private parties, even the screening committee was not competent to consider its allocation to any company much less to Castron Technologies Limited.
(with IANS inputs)