Coal scam: Special CBI court records statement of Jindal group's former CA

A special CBI court on Wednesday recorded the statement of Suresh Singhal, former Chartered Accountant working with the Jindal group, who has turned approver in a coal scam case involving ex-MP Naveen Jindal and others as accused.

The court said Singhal's name stands deleted from the accused list and included in prosecution witnesses.

Meanwhile, the court also pulled up the investigating agency for slow progress in the case and asked the CBI to speed up the investigation.

The hearing will next take place on August 24.

A trial court had last month allowed Singhal to turn approver in a case related to coal block allocations.

The order was passed by special CBI judge Bharat Parashar after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) backed the decision on May 31.

As per reports, besides Jindal, the special court has also framed charges against former minister of state for coal Dasari Narayan Rao, ex-Jharkhand chief minister Madhu Koda and 12 others for criminal conspiracy, cheating in a coal scam involving irregularity in allocation of the Amarkonda Murgadangal coal block.

The massive irregularities in the allocation of coal blocks came to light in 2012 after the national auditor said a notional amount of Rs. 1.86 lakh crores had been lost through the blocks being distributed without a transparent bidding process.

Most of these allocations have been made by the erstwhile UPA regime. Former prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh, who had also been summoned in one of the cases, received a reprieve from the Supreme Court earlier in April this year.

Five firms, Jindal Steel and Power Ltd.(JSPL), Jindal Realty Pvt. Ltd., Gagan Infraenergy Ltd. (formerly known as GSIPL), Sowbhagya Media Ltd. and New Delhi Exim Pvt. Ltd. were also among those on trial.