Coal scam: Court allows ex-MoS Dilip Ray to travel abroad

A special court today allowed former Union Minister of State for Coal Dilip Ray, an accused along with five others in a coal scam case, to travel to Thailand and China for some official work.
Special CBI Judge Bharat Parashar, who had on February 26 granted bail to Ray and others, passed the order on an application moved by the politician seeking permission to go abroad from April 9 to 29 for business-related work.
The case pertains to alleged irregularities in allocation of Brahmadiha coal block in Giridih in Jharkhand to Castron Technologies Ltd (CTL) in 1999.
The CBI, however, opposed Ray's plea stating this could result in delay in trial. It also said that Ray may misuse permission and not return to face trial in the case.

The judge, however, granted the permission saying, "I am of the considered opinion that it will be in the interest of justice that accused is granted permission to visit abroad..."
The court asked Ray to furnish in a fixed deposit of Rs 20 lakh as a condition. "He shall not tamper with evidence nor try to influence any witness in any manner and will not use the permission granted to him contrary to the rules," it said.

The court also asked CBI to supply some deficient documents, annexed with the charge sheet, to Ray and Castron Mining Ltd (CML), also an accused in the case, within a week and posted the matter for scrutiny of documents on April 18.

The court's direction came on the pleas of Ray and CML seeking copies of deficient documents.
Besides Ray, who was a minister in 1999 in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, the court had granted bail to three other individual accused, two senior officials of the Coal Ministry (MoC) at that time-- Pradip Kumar Banerjee and Nitya Nand Gautam, and CTL director Mahendra Kumar Agarwalla.
The court had on January 18 summoned Ray as an accused in the case. Besides Ray, the court had summoned Banerjee, Gautam, Agarwalla, CTL and CML as accused. Banerjee was the then Additional Secretary in MoC while Gautam was Advisor (Projects) in the ministry.

The court, while ordering framing of charges, said, "When the said file was put up before Madhu Koda for approval then he immediately stated that he wanted some change in the recommendation on account of his political compulsions."
"He, thereafter, carried out the said change himself when the secretaries and the chief secretary of the state of Jharkhand refused to change the recommendation on their own at his instance," the court said.
It, however, added that whether Koda abused his official position while making recommendation on behalf of government of Jharkhand to the Ministry of Coal can be looked into only during the course of trial when the two sides would lead their respective evidence.

The court fixed May 11 for formally framing the charges against the accused.
Apart from Jindal, Rao and Koda, the court also ordered to put on trial former Coal Secretary H C Gupta and 11 others, who were named in a charge sheet by CBI in the case pertaining to alleged irregularities in allocation of Amarkonda Murgadangal coal block to JSPL and GSIPL in 2008.