The Central Bureau of Investigation on Tuesday filed a case against its former director Ranjit Sinha under the Prevention of Corruption Act for allegedly “scuttling” and “influencing” probe into the coal block allocation scam by meeting high-profile accused persons.
Sinha has been charged under Sections 13-2 (criminal misconduct) and Section 13-1 d (abuse of official position and indulging in corruption) of the Prevention of Corruption (PC) Act 1988. If convicted, Sinha may face up to seven years’ imprisonment.
Following the direction of the Supreme Court, the CBI had formed a Special Investigation Team to conduct an investigation into the abuse of authority prima facie committed by Sinha with a view “to scuttling enquiries, investigations, and prosecutions being carried out by the CBI in the coal block allocation cases”, said the CBI FIR.
Sinha is the second CBI director to be probed by the agency after his predecessor AP Singh, who was booked by
the premier investigative agency, along with meat exporter Moin Qureshi, in a money laundering case.
Sinha had faced the ignominy of being restrained by the Supreme Court from handling the 2G and coal scam cases when he was heading the CBI. During his two years’ tenure from 2012 to 2014, the CBI was also called a “caged parrot” by the Supreme Court.
“In view of the orders of the Supreme Court dated January 23, 2017 vide which CBI was instructed to conduct an investigation (as a Special Investigating Team) into the abuse of authority prima facie committed by Ranjit Sinha with a view to scuttle enquires, investigations and prosecution,” the FIR said.
“During investigations of the coal block allocation cases, certain allegations were levelled about the inappropriate conduct of then CBI director Ranjit Sinha. The Supreme Court which was looking into all the above matters of the coal block allocations had held that it was completely inappropriate for Ranjit Sinha to have met persons accused in the coal block allocation scam without the investigating officer being present or without the investigating team being present. Hence it is necessary to look into the question whether any one or more such meetings of Sinha with accused persons without the investigating officer have had any impact on
the investigations and subsequent charge sheets or closure reports filed by the CBI,” the FIR said.
The FIR further stated that on the instruction of the SC, a team headed by Ml Sharma, ex-Special Director, CBI was constituted to probe visitors’ diary at Sinha’s official residence enquire into the matter. The probe showed that several accused of the coal block allocation scam case were regular visitors to his houses.
After this, a special investigative team (SIT) headed by CBI was set up to look into Sharma’s findings and other related documents.
The agency had registered three preliminary enquiries (PEs) against unknown public servants, inter alia, of the offenses relating to the allocation of coal blocks for the period from 1993 to 2005 and 2006 to 2009. A total of 54 regular cases have also been registered against public servants and private persons.
The alleged irregularities in the coal scam, also popularly called “Coalgate”, came to the light when a visitors’ diary revealed that Sinha had “privately” met some of the high-profile accused at his official residence several times.