Coal scam case: Two directors of private firm sentenced to imprisonment for 4 years

A Special Court on Monday awarded two directors of a private firm to four years of imprisonment. They were recently convicted for irregularities, cheating, forgery and criminal conspiracy in connection with the allocation of the Patrapara coal block case.

The CBI Judge Arun Bhardwaj, while passing the judgement, said that considering the overall facts and circumstances, aggravating and mitigating factors and other circumstances, the convicted persons are awarded imprisonment.

The court also imposed a fine of Rs 30 lakh each on the company as well as the convicted directors.

"Circumstantial evidence in this case unerringly pointed to the conspiracy amongst the accused and there was no other inference except the inference of a criminal conspiracy to secure allocation of a coal block by cheating the Minister of State, Screening Committee and Ministry of Coal, and Government of India," the court said.

Senior Public Prosecutor AP Singh, DLA Sanjay Kumar, ALA, VK Sharma and Senior PP NP Shrivastava appeared for CBI in the case while Advocates Vijay Aggarwal, Vijay Gupta, Mudit Jain and Nagesh Behl appeared for convicts.

Last week, the court convicted Adhunik Corporation Ltd and two of its directors and said, "All the charges framed against M/s Adhunik Corporation Limited are proved and is convicted for the offence under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 120B, 420 and 471."

All the charges framed against Nirmal Kumar Agarwal are proved and he is convicted for the offence under IPC sections 120B, 420 and 471 IPC.

Mahesh Kumar Agarwal is convicted for the offence under sections 120B, 420, 471 and 511 of IPC.

As per the chargesheet, the West Bengal Pollution Control Board had issued consent to operate two numbers of rotary kilns with a capacity of 100 metric tons per day (MTPD) and 80 metric tons per day (MTPD), totalling 180 MTPD.

Therefore, the sponge iron production capacity of M/s ACPL at their plant at Durgapur was 180 MTPD (54,000 metric tons per year considering 300 working days in a year as per the norms of MoS). Therefore, according to CBI, M/s ACPL was not having 72,000 TPY existing sponge iron capacity as was falsely mentioned in their letter dated April 7, 2003.

"During the course of the investigation, it was found that M/s Adhunik Corporation Ltd had misrepresented on various aspects both to Ministry of Steel and thereby to Ministry of Coal with a view to cheat them so as to procure allocation of Patrapara coal block," CBI had said in its charge sheet.

While taking cognisance of the chargesheet, the court had discharged another director of the firm, Ghanshyam Das Agarwal, who was also chargesheeted by CBI in the case, saying there was no sufficient incriminating evidence on record which could lead to his summoning as an accused in the matter.

( With inputs from ANI )