A special court Friday rejected an application of a company, facing prosecution in cases pertaining to alleged irregularities in the allocation of coal blocks, seeking joint trial in two cases filed by the CBI and the ED.
Imposing a cost of Rs 1 lakh, Special CBI Judge Bharat Parashar dismissed the plea filed by businessman Manoj Kumar Jayaswal, accused in coal scam cases relating to his company AMR Iron and Steel Pvt Ltd.
The plea said that after the perusal of complaint filed by Enforcement Directorate, it is found that the allegations levelled in the complaint are similar to the one levelled in the charge-sheet filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation.
The plea said that two cases are closely knit and related to each other as common witnesses and common documents have been relied upon in both the cases.
It said that a bare perusal of the complaint filed by the ED shows that the same is based on the CBI case only and thus as both the cases are pending disposal before this Court, so a separate trial in the two cases will cause great prejudice to the accused persons.
The judge, however, said: "I find that the present application is completely devoid of any merits and is clearly an attempt to simply stall and delay the proceedings. I accordingly dismiss the present application with an exemplary cost of Rs 1,00,000 to be deposited by accused/applicant company AMR Iron & Steel Pvt. Ltd with the New Delhi Bar Association towards their library fund".
The court also noted that order on charge in the CBI case has been passed while on the other hand, arguments on charge are yet to be heard in the case filed by ED and thus the stage of the two cases is different.
In the CBI case, the court in July ordered framing of cheating and other charges against former Rajya Sabha MP Vijay Darda, his son Devendra Darda; former coal secretary H C Gupta; Nagpur- based AMR Iron and Steel Pvt Ltd and Jayaswal in the case pertaining to the allocation of Maharashtra's Bander coal block to the company.
It however had discharged former Minister of State for Coal Santosh Bagrodia and L S Janoti, who was then working as a section officer in the ministry.
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