Delhi’s Special Rouse Avenue Court has taken cognizance of the CBI charge sheet in the case of irregularities and irregularities in the allocation of Gare Palma IV/1 coal block in Chhattisgarh. The court has sent summons to industrialist and Lok Sabha MP Naveen Jindal, former Coal Secretary PC Parekh and other accused. Special Judge Sunaina Sharma said in her order that this charge sheet, which is being described as one of the biggest charge sheets in the coal block case, has been filed by the CBI more than a decade after the FIR was registered. The court has a lot of material to proceed further in this case.
The court has ordered the appearance of M/s Jindal Steel and Power Limited, its managing directors Naveen Jindal, Parekh, Rakesh Kumar Jindal, Ram Kishore, SK Aggarwal and M/s Jindal Strips Limited (now M/s Nalwa Sons Investments Limited) on July 17. The court said that there are 778 documents of more than 1 lakh pages and 234 listed witnesses in the charge sheet. The court said in its cognizance order dated June 1 that a lengthy investigation, which involved a lot of records and many witnesses, was conducted. Moreover, the time taken by the competent authorities to grant necessary prosecution sanction in the case of accused government servants is a major reason for the inordinate delay in filing charge sheets.
The court said that after considering the arguments of the senior government counsel for CBI in the light of the allegations given in the charge sheet, the specific role of each accused and the documents filed in its support, this court has enough material available to proceed further in this case. This also includes statements of witnesses.
Irregularities came to light in CBI investigation
The court said that the CBI investigation had revealed several irregularities, such as mining outside the areas approved by the screening committee, mining in excess of the permitted limits, selling of coal fines and washery rejects to sister companies and private parties without permission and the minutes of a 2005 meeting were wrongly recorded to make some of the irregularities appear to be routine.
The court said that, therefore, I take cognizance of sections 120 B (criminal conspiracy) read with 409 (criminal breach of trust by public servant, or banker, merchant or agent) of the IPC and 420 (fraud) and sections 13(2) read with 13(1)(c) and 13(1)(d) of the PC Act, 1988 and the main offenses thereof.
Section 13 of the provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act relates to criminal misconduct of a public servant. Section 13(1)(c) applies when a public servant dishonestly or fraudulently misappropriates, alters or allows others to use any property entrusted to him or under his control in his official capacity. Section 13(1)(d) applies when a public servant misuses his official position to obtain for himself or any other person any valuable thing or monetary benefit without public interest, while Section 13(2) is a punishment clause.
This case came to light from the preliminary investigation registered by the CBI on September 26, 2012, based on the instructions of the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC). The CVC had sent for investigation two complaints by the then Congress MP Sandeep Dixit, alleging irregularities in the allotment of 24 coal blocks between 1993 and 2005. CBI had registered this case against the accused in 2014 on the basis of investigation against Gare Palma IV/1 coal block allotted to M/s Jindal Strips Limited.
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