CBI questions Hindalco officials

Former coal secretary P C Parakh is likely to be quizzed next

Even as the deadline for completing the coal allocation scam probe is fast approaching, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is yet to take a call on whether to call industrialist Kumar Mangalam Birla for questioning.

While the investigative agency has been questioning senior Hindalco executives for the past three days in connection with the case registered against the company for the allocation of the Talabira-II coal block, a CBI official said Birla was unlikely to be called “anytime soon”.

However, former coal secretary P C Parakh — the main accused in the case who’s in the news for his book Crusader or Conspirator? that was critical of CBI — will be examined next week, the official confirmed.

CBI has maintained investigations in the case are in the last leg and a final decision will be taken after examining all the accused.

The Supreme Court has asked for a status report from the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate about the ongoing investigation by May 7. The report will update the details by

April 30. CBI had set a deadline for itself to finish the probe by the end of April.

The agency had lodged a First Information Report (FIR) against Parakh, Birla, unknown officials, and Hindalco in October last year. Besides attacking the CBI for doing a “witchhunt”, Parakh’s book points fingers at Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, too, for being ineffective in managing the ministers concerned. According to the book, the CBI is “either outright incompetent or is playing a deeper game which I do not understand”.

To that, CBI director Ranjit Sinha said a former bureaucrat should not preach to the agency on law and probe methods. Parakh had lashed at Sinha in the book for not naming the Prime Minister in the FIR. He said if CBI had the “courage of conviction, he (Sinha) ought to have named the Prime Minister in the FIR.”

So far, CBI has registered 18 FIRs in the scam. Of these, it has filed a chargesheet in two cases — against Navabharat Power and AMR Iron and Steel — and filed closure reports in another two cases, against Vikash Metals and Kamal Sponge and Power.