A city court on Wednesday asked CBI to file its report by August 29 regarding further probe in a coal scam case involving Congress leader and industrialist Naveen Jindal, ex-Minister of State for Coal Dasari Narayan Rao, former Coal Secretary H C Gupta and others.
Special CBI Judge Bharat Parashar gave the directions after he was informed that the investigating officer in the case, who was earlier asked to file the report by today, could not appear due to illness.
The court had earlier allowed CBI’s plea that they needed to probe the case further in the light of certain disclosures made by a chartered accountant, Suresh Singhal, who had sought court’s nod to turn approver.
The court recently allowed Mr Singhal’s plea for pardon and had ordered deletion of his name from the list of accused.
CBI had earlier alleged that ex-Jharkhand Chief Minister Madhu Koda, also accused in the case, had favoured Jindal group firms — Jindal Steel and Power Ltd (JSPL) and Gagan Sponge Iron Private Ltd (GSIPL) — in allocation of Amarkonda Murgadangal coal block in Jharkhand.
It had also claimed that the accused had conspired with each other to get the allocation of the coal block in favour of the two Jindal group firms.
Opposing CBI’s contention, all the accused had said that there was no evidence which showed that they were in any conspiracy during the coal block allocation process.
They had also denied the allegations levelled against them by CBI in its charge sheet.
Mr Jindal, Mr Rao, Mr Koda, mR Gupta and 11 others were chargesheeted by CBI in the case pertaining to alleged irregularities in allocation of the coal block to JSPL and GSIPL.
Besides them, the other individual accused were — Rajeev Jain, Director of Jindal Realty Pvt Ltd, Girish Kumar Suneja and Radha Krishna Saraf, Directors of GSIPL, Suresh Singhal, Director of New Delhi Exim Pvt Ltd, K Ramakrishna Prasad, Managing Director of Sowbhagya Media Ltd and chartered accountant Gyan Swaroop Garg. These accused are currently out on bail. Singhal’s name was later deleted from the list of the accused.
PTI