CBI withheld documents in coal block case against Vikas Metals and Power: Court

A court here Tuesday observed that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had withheld material documents and statement of witnesses in a closure report in coal block allocation case against Kolkata based company Vikash Metals and Power Ltd.

The court ordered CBI Director Ranjit Sinha and all deputy inspectors general (DIGs) concerned to look into the matter.

Special Judge Bharat Parashar said that he had repeatedly told CBI that the "closure reports should be detailed and duly supported by legally sustainable reasons but it appears that no heed is being paid by the investigating agency officers."

"Even the basic nuances of investigation appears to be missing," said the court, while hearing a closure report filed in coal block allocation case against the Kolkata-based company.

"...it is clear that the CBI Officers are not paying any heed to the well settled provisions of Code of Criminal Procedure and even that of their Crime Manual before filing of final reports," he said.

"I deem it appropriate that a show cause notice by way of the present order be issued to both IO (investigating officer) Inspector Rajbir Singh and SP Nirbhay Kumar to explain the aforesaid circumstances in which material documents and statement of witnesses as mentioned in the present order were withheld from this court."

It added that "their explanation will certainly enable this court to know as to whether these two officers lack basic skills of investigation which needs to be honed up or it was a deliberate act on their part."

He asked them to file the report till Wednesday and posted the matter for further hearing till then.

"Copy of this order shall also be sent to Director CBI and to all DIGs of CBI who are supervising investigation of coal block allocation cases. They shall personally look into all such matters lest in future also such kind of reports are filed in this court, for which they will be personally held responsible," the court ordered.

It observed that "during the course of investigation, IO also recorded statement of a number of persons under section 161 CrPC, such as that of screening Committee members or number of other officers/officials of Ministry of Coal and other departments but again for reasons best known to the IO he did not care to file them on record."

A first information report was registered against Vikash Metals and Power Limited and its officials, accusing them of making false claims related to land allocation to get undue advantage in the coal block allocation in Sep 2012.

The accused were booked for the alleged offences under sections 120 B (criminal conspiracy) and 420(cheating) of the IPC.