March,29,2016:

The accused had acquired the coal block on the basis of false and forged documents.

A special court on Monday convicted Jharkhand Ispat Pvt Ltd (JIPL) and its two directors R S Rungta and R C Rungta in a case pertaining to irregularities in allotment of a coal block in the state to the firm.

This is the first coal block allocation scam case in which the special court, which was set up to exclusively deal with all the coal scam matters, has delivered its judgement.

Special CBI Judge Bharat Parashar convicted the Rungta brothers and the company for offences of cheating and criminal conspiracy, saying they had illegally acquired the North Dhadu coal block. Though the court convicted the trio in the case, it also acquitted them of certain charges such as the charge of forgery.

The Rungtas, who were on bail, were taken into custody after the court held them guilty in the case. The court will now decide the quantum of sentence for the convicts on March 31.

Pressing for their conviction, CBI had told the court that the accused had acquired the coal block allegedly on the basis of false and forged documents. On March 21 last year, the court had framed charges against the three for the alleged offences punishable under sections 120-B (criminal conspiracy) read with 420 (cheating), 467 (forgery of valuable security), 468 (forgery for the purpose of cheating) and 471 (using a forged document as genuine) of IPC.

 All the accused had pleaded not guilty and claimed trial, while refuting the allegations levelled against them by CBI. On December 23 last year, the court had dismissed RS Rungta's plea to summon former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and ex-Minister of State for Coal Dasari Narayan Rao as defence witnesses in the case.

In its chargesheet, CBI had alleged that during the probe, it was found that JIPL had "grossly misrepresented" a number of aspects before Ministry of Steel (MoS) and Ministry of Coal (MoC) to inflate their claim and thereby induced the MoC officers and the screening committee to allocate the coal block to them.

CBI had alleged that JIPL along with three other firms, M/s Electro Steel Casting Ltd, M/s Adhunik Alloys and Power Ltd and M/s Pawanjay Steel and Power Ltd, was jointly allocated North Dhadu coal block by 27th and 30th screening committee.
CBI had alleged that no efforts were made either by the screening committee to verify the claims made by the applicant firm and that MoS also did not develop any methodology for assessment of the applicant companies.
It had claimed that some records of MoC relating to the case was stated to be missing and a separate preliminary enquiry has been registered by CBI. TNN
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