Coal scam: Former NDA minister Dilip Ray, 5 others summoned as accused

NEW DELHI: Dilip Ray, who was Union Minister of State for Coal during the erstwhile NDA government in 1999, has been summoned as an accused along with five others in connection with a coal block allocation case by a Special Court here.

Ray is the first minister of the NDA government who has been summoned as an accused in a coal scam case.

Besides Ray, the court has also summoned Pradip Kumar Banerjee, who was the then Additional Secretary in Ministry of Coal (MoC), Nitya Nand Gautam, who was the then advisor (projects) in MOC, Castron Technologies Ltd, its director Mahendra Kumar Agarwalla and Castron Mining as accused in the case.

The case pertains to the alleged irregularities in allocation of Brahmadiha coal block in Giridih in Jharkhand to Castron Technologies Ltd in 1999.

Special CBI Judge Bharat Parashar summoned these four persons and the two firms for the alleged offences under section 120-B (criminal conspiracy), 420 (cheating) and 409 (Criminal breach of trust) of IPC and under the relevant provisions of Prevention of Corruption (PC) Act.

The court has directed them to appear before it on February 26.

The court summoned these accused after taking cognizance of CBI's charge sheet filed against them in the case.

In its order, the court said there were "prima facie" enough evidence to summon them as accused in the case.

"The public servants, in fact, actively connived with private parties involved so as to facilitate misappropriation of nationalised natural resources of the country by them," the judge said in its order.