Essar GM arrested on Naxal payoff charge

The general manager of Essar Steel’s Kirandul project in Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada district, D V C S Verma, was arrested on Tuesday on a charge of alleged cash payment to Naxalites as protection payoff. He was remanded by a court to two days in police custody.

The district police superintendent, Ankit Garg, said a deputy manager of Essar posted at Chitrakonda would also be arrested. “We are sending a team to arrest the official,” Garg said.

An Essar spokesman has strongly denied the charge. Dantewada is one of the country’s worst-affected Naxal districts.

The company supplies high-grade iron ore from its eight-million tonne per annum (mtpa) benefication plant near Kirandul to a pellet plant in Visakhapatnam. It is pumped as slurry through a 267-km pipeline, the second longest in the world, to the pellet plant.

On September 9, the Dantewada police had nabbed a contractor, B K Lala, working for Essar, while carrying cash of Rs 15 lakh. Lal is said to have confessed that he was to pay the money to Naxals on behalf of Essar. The company was served a notice to clarify its stand on 17 points the police raised.

“After a thorough probe that established Essar officials’ link in the case, we finally arrested the general manager of the Kirandul on Tuesday afternoon,” Garg told Business Standard.

The official has been booked under the Chhattisgarh Public Security Act and the Indian Penal Code, for paying to the banned organisation. Verma was produced before a court in the evening and remanded.

In a statement, an Essar spokesperson said the company “vehemently rejects all allegations made regarding payments to Naxalites. Essar would like to state that such baseless allegations were being made to hurt the image and reputation of the group, which is a law-abiding corporate. Essar has always put the country’s interest first in all its dealings”.