The New Delhi CBI Special Court’s order on sentence against former Union Minister Dilip Ray and five others convicted in Jharkhand coal scam would be announced on October 26. The order was earlier scheduled for Wednesday (October 14)
Ray was Minister of State for Coal in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Government in 1999.
On Wednesday, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), in a significant move, moved a Delhi court to award life imprisonment to Ray and the other convicts in coal block allocation case. On other hand, convicts urged court to take a lenient view due to their old age and prior clean antecedents. The CBI, on its part, argued in court that a maximum punishment would send a message to society in view of fact that white-collar crimes are on rise.
Notably, on October 6, Special Judge Bharat Parashar of the Rouse Avenue Court had convicted Ray and others saying that they had conspired together beyond shadows of all reasonable doubts to procure allocation of coal block of 105.153 hectares of non-nationalised and abandoned mining area in Jharkhand in favour of Castron Technologies Limited by 14th Screening Committee of Ministry of Coal in 1999. Besides Ray, two former senior officials of Coal Ministry, Pradip Kumar Banerjee, then Additional Secretary, and Nitya Nand Gautam, former Advisor (Projects), Castron Technologies its director MK Agarwalla and Castron Mining Limited have also been convicted.