Ranchi firm, others to be formally charged in coal scam

A local court has ordered to frame charges against a Ranchi-based company Domco Private Ltd and five other individuals accused in a coal block allocation case.

The court, however, discharged one of the accused in the case.

Special Judge Bharat Parashar said the charges will be formally framed against Domco (earlier known as Domco Somkeless Fuels Pvt Ltd) and its directors Binay Prakash, Vasant Diwakar Manjrekar and Parmananda Mondal and chartered accountants Manoj Kumar Gupta and Sanjay Khandelwal on February 13.

The court observed that prima facie charges for the offences under Section 120-B (criminal conspiracy) and Section 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) are being made out against DOMCO Pvt Ltd, Binay Parkash, Manjrekar, Mondal, Gupta and Khandelwal.

The order was delivered on January 25 but released on Friday.

The court, however, discharged Shukdeo Parsad, observing that charge for none of the offences is even prima facie established against him.

The court was hearing a case pertaining to alleged irregularities in allocation of Lalgarh (North) Coal Block in West Bokaro Coal Fields in Jharkhand in favour of Domco.

In the chargesheet, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) stated that during investigations it found that company Domco Smokeless Fuels Pvt Ltd had misrepresented on a number of counts both to steel and coal ministries.

It was also found that a criminal conspiracy was hatched by Domco and its directors with various other people, so as to induce the Steel Ministry to make a recommendation in its favour for allotment of a coal block to the Coal Ministry and thereafter to induce the latter to allot a captive coal block to the company.

The CBI has claimed in its chargesheet that Domco Pvt Ltd had applied to the Steel Ministry for allotment of a captive coal block to set up a pig iron plant of two lakh tonnes per annum capacity at Rairangpur in Odisha.

The company had initially misrepresented that it had acquired 200 acres of land, whereas no land was acquired by it, the CBI has alleged.

The probe agency added that the land stated to have been acquired by the Domco, in fact belonged to the Orissa Oil Industries Ltd.

Parsad was the General Manager of the Orissa Oil Industries Ltd.

--IANS

akk/nir/vt