Former Meghalaya Chief Secretary Kuljit Singh Kropha has been sentenced to two-year imprisonment in a coal scam case related to irregularities in allocation of a coal block in Maharashtra.
The Special CBI Court in Delhi today also imposed a fine of Rs 50,000 on Kropha who was a former Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Coal.
The court also awarded a three-year jail term to former Coal Secretary H C Gupta for his role in the scam. Gupta was asked to pay a fine of Rs 1 lakh.
The two senior officials were convicted for criminal conspiracy, criminal breach of trust, cheating and corruption in the case related to allocation of the Lohara East coal block.
Kropha, a 1982 batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of Assam-Meghalaya cadre, served as Chief Secretary of Meghalaya from February 2016 to May 2017.
The court, meanwhile, awarded a four year jail term to Mukesh Gupta, the director of the convicted company, Grace Industries Ltd. (GIL), for criminal conspiracy and cheating and imposed a fine of Rs two lakh on him, while the company was also directed to pay a fine of Rs two lakh separately. Both were convicted for criminal conspiracy and cheating.
The trial of the case was conducted by senior advocate R S Cheema, Deputy Legal Advisor for the CBI Sanjay Kumar and senior public prosecutor A P Singh.
H C Gupta was earlier convicted in three other coal scam cases and his appeal against those convictions is pending before the Delhi High Court. He is currently on bail along with other convicted persons in the case.
According to the CBI, between 2005 and 2011, the accused persons hatched a criminal conspiracy and cheated Ministry of Coal, Government of India by dishonestly and fraudulently inducing the Ministry of Coal to allocate ‘Lohara East Coal Block’ in favour of GIL on the basis of false information about net worth, capacity, equipments and status of procurement and installation of plant.
The CBI also stated that the company, in its application, claimed its net worth as Rs 120 crore whereas its own net worth was only Rs 3.3 crore, and that the company also falsified its existing capacity as 1,20,000 TPA against 30,000 TPA.
The Supreme Court had on August 25, 2014 cancelled the entire allocations of coal blocks. This is the eleventh conviction in coal scam cases secured by prosecution. (With PTI inputs)
