Gondwana Ispat Ltd and its director have been summoned as accused by a Special court in a coal block allocation case for allegedly misrepresenting facts to get a coal block in Maharashtra allocated to it.
The court passed the order after taking cognizance of CBI charge sheet and directed the firm and its director Ashok Daga to appear before it on February 1 for the alleged offences of criminal conspiracy and cheating under the IPC.
"I am of the considered opinion that prima facie there is sufficient incriminating evidence on record warranting summoning of both accused i.E. Company M/s Gondwana Ispat Ltd (GIL) and its director Ashok Daga for offences under sections 120-B (criminal conspiracy) and 420 (cheating) of the IPC and also for the substantive offence under section 420 of the IPC," Special CBI Judge Bharat Parashar said.
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"Accordingly summons be issued to accused company M/s GIL and its Director Ashok Daga for February 1, to be served through the investigating officer," the court said.
It also said that if the role of any other person, including public servants, crops up during trial, necessary action should be initiated against them.
The firm was allocated Majra coal block in 2003 and an FIR was lodged against it in 2014.
CBI alleged in the charge sheet that during probe, it was found that Daga had made "unsubstantiated claim even towards financial preparedness and tie up regarding iron ore with Odisha government".
It alleged that as the Ministry of Coal (MOC) then was not following any system of checking the falsity of information provided by an applicant company, M/S GIL and Daga in furtherance of a criminal conspiracy misrepresented to various government authorities and induced them to reserve or allocate Majra coal block in their favour.
The CBI claimed that on April 22, 2000, Daga had applied
to MoC for allotment of Ekarjuna Extension coal block in Maharashtra for setting up a washery cum sponge iron plant of 60,000 tonne per year capacity in Warora area but it was rejected.
Thereafter, on September 25, 2001, Daga again applied for allotment of Warora West coal block in Maharashtra for setting up 1.2 lakh tonne per annum washery cum sponge iron plant.
It said that in continuation of its earlier application, M/s GIL requested MoC to consider allotment of Majra-Belgaon coal blocks having extractable reserve of 8 to 10 million tonnes as an alternate to Warora North coal block.
MoC, in its 18th Screening Committee meeting held on May 5, 2003, considered the application of M/s GIL and Chandrapur Ispat Ltd for allocation of Majra-Belgaon coal block.
The agency said that based on the documents and representation submitted by the company, the Ministry on October 29, 2003, reserved Majra coal block for M/s GIL subject to certain conditions regarding development of the coal block and specific end use of coal extracted from there.
CBI claimed that during probe, it was found that though after allocation of the coal block in 2003 Daga had filed an undertaking to MOC that he will install plant or carry out its extension and develop the coal mine, he sold off the company to Nand Kishore Sarda while earning huge profit in October 2005.
