This Article is From Apr 01, 2016

Coal Scam: Court Allows Former Minister of State Dilip Ray To Travel Abroad

Coal Scam: Court Allows Former Minister of State Dilip Ray To Travel Abroad

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

New Delhi: 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 Mr 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 Mr Ray's plea stating this could result in delay in trial. It also said that Mr 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 Mr 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 Mr Ray and CML seeking copies of deficient documents.

Besides Mr 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 Mr Ray as an accused in the case. Besides Mr 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, which took cognisance of the CBI charge sheet, had summoned the accused for the alleged offences under section 120-B (criminal conspiracy), 420 (cheating) and 409 (criminal breach of trust) of IPC and under provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act.
.