Coal scam: Six accused granted bail in Domco Pvt Ltd's case

A special court today granted bail to three directors of Ranchi-based company, M/s Domco Pvt Ltd, and three others in a coal scam case in which they are accused of misrepresenting facts to acquire a coal block in Jharkhand.
The court allowed the bail applications of the firm's three directors, Binay Prakash, Vasant Diwakar Manjrekar and Parmananda Mondal, chartered accountants Manoj Kumar Gupta and Sanjay Khandelwal and one Shukdeo Prasad after they appeared before it in pursuance to summons issued against them.
Special CBI Judge Bharat Parashar
granted bail to them on
a personal bond of Rs one lakh each with one surety of the like amount.

The court asked CBI to supply copies of documents and the charge sheet to the accused and fixed the matter for March 16.

The six accused and the firm were summoned by the court for alleged offences of cheating and criminal conspiracy under the IPC after it had taken cognisance of CBI's charge sheet.
During arguments, the lawyers representing the accused said their clients were not arrested during the probe and claimed that no loss was suffered by the government.
Senior public prosecutor Sanjay Kumar told the court that presence of accused was necessary during proceedings and if granted bail, they should not tamper with the evidence.

In its charge sheet, CBI has claimed that Domco Pvt Ltd, which was earlier known M/s Domco Smokeless Fuels 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 through its director Prakash.
CBI has alleged that on the basis of information and documents furnished, the Ministry of Coal proceeded to finally allocate Lalgarh (North) coal block in West Bokaro coal fields of Jharkhand in favour of the firm.
It has alleged that during the probe, it was found that the firm, M/s Domco Smokeless Fuels Pvt Ltd had misrepresented to the Ministries of Steel and Coal on a number of counts.

It claimed that a conspiracy was hatched by the firm and its directors with various other persons to induce Ministry of Coal to allot a captive coal block in its favour and alleged that the applicant firm had furnished false and fabricated balance sheets to support its inflated claim of its net worth.
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Earlier, the court had allowed CBI to quiz Singhal and carry out further probe into the matter before responding to his application for granting pardon and turning approver.
On April 29, the court had ordered framing of charges against the accused for criminal conspiracy, cheating and other offences in the case. The court, however, is yet to formally frame charges against them.

The court had on May 20 allowed CBI's plea that before answering to the plea of Singhal for pardon, it wanted to interrogate him to decide whether his assistance could strengthen the case.
The advocate appearing for Singhal as amicus curiae had told the court that the accused was in possession of various documents and could produce them as and when required.
On May 11, the court had said that Singhal's statement be supplied to CBI for rendering assistance on the issue. Following this, the documents were supplied to the agency.
The court had, however, clarified that issue of supplying the copy of Singhal's statement to the counsel representing other accused would be decided after hearing the arguments advanced by the probe agency.

While seeking pardon, Singhal had made a disclosure statement in the case which was recorded by a magistrate and placed before the special judge in a sealed cover.
Apart from Jindal, Rao and Koda, the court had ordered to put on trial former Coal Secretary H C Gupta and 11 others who were chargesheeted by the CBI in the case pertaining to alleged irregularities in allocation of Amarkonda Murgadangal coal block to and GSIPL.
The other accused in the case are Rajeev Jain, Director of Jindal Realty Pvt Ltd (JRPL), Girish Kumar Suneja and Radha Krishna Saraf, Directors of GSIPL, Singhal, also Director of New Delhi Exim Pvt Ltd, K Ramakrishna Prasad, Managing Director of Sowbhagya Media Ltd and chartered accountant Gyan Swaroop Garg. All the accused are currently out on bail.

Besides them, five firms -- JSPL, JRPL, Gagan Infraenergy Ltd (formerly known as GSIPL), Sowbhagya Media Ltd and New Delhi Exim Pvt Ltd -- are also accused in the case.