BackCoal Scam case: Former coal secretary H.C. Gupta awarded 2-year jail term
Former coal secretary H.C. Gupta was awarded two-year imprisonment by a special CBI court in a coal scam case
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New Delhi: A special court Monday sentenced former coal secretary H.C. Gupta and two other bureaucrats to two years in jail in relation to irregularities in coal block allocations.
The case is related to allocation of the Thesgora-B Rudrapuri coal block in Madhya Pradesh to Kamal Sponge Steel and Power Ltd (KSSPL).
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), in its chargesheet, had said that KSPPL’s application for the coal block allocation was incomplete and should have been rejected at the initial stage.
The two other convicts are K.S. Kropha, former joint secretary in the coal ministry and current chief secretary of Meghalaya and K.C. Samaria, who was the director in the coal ministry at the time of allocation.
All convicts were granted conditional bail and given time to appeal their sentence to the high court.
Special CBI judge Bharat Parashar also imposed a fine of Rs1 crore on KSSPL, and Rs1 lakh on each of the three convicts.
Pawan Kumar Ahluwalia, managing director of KSSPL, was also sentenced to three years of imprisonment and fined Rs30 lakh.
Gupta, KSSPL and others were convicted by the special court on 18 May and booked under provisions of the Indian Penal Code including Section 120B (criminal conspiracy), 420 (cheating) and provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988.
In October, the court had framed charges against the accused and observed that former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had been kept in the dark by Gupta, who had prima facie violated the law and abused his position as a public servant.
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