Coal scam: Court fixes 2 May for consideration on charge sheet

New Delhi: A Delhi court on Thursday fixed 2 May for considering the chargesheet filed by CBI in the coal block allocation scam case against Navabharat Power Pvt Ltd and its two directors.  Special CBI Judge Madhu Jain fixed the matter for 2 May as CBI has not yet filed its complete set of documents, which were part of the charge sheet filed on 10 March. According to the agency sources, CBI on Thursday filed some of the documents which were part of the charge sheet in which the firm and its two directors were accused of conspiring and cheating by purportedly misrepresenting facts to “embellish” its applications to get allotments between 2006 and 2009. This was the first charge sheet filed by CBI out of the 16 FIRs lodged by it till date in the multi-crore scam against various firms and top corporates, also including industrialist Kumar Mangalam Birla and Congress MP Naveen Jindal. According to the agency sources, Navabharat Power Pvt Ltd, its two directors – P Trivikrama Prasad and Y Harish Chandra Prasad – were named as accused in the charge sheet filed before the court. They have been chargesheeted under sections 420 (cheating) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC, sources said. Surprisingly, the charge sheet makes no mention of provisions of Prevention of Corruption Act which was slapped against them in the FIR lodged on September 3, 2012. The sources had, however, added that CBI has said in its 32-page final report that the probe against unknown public servants in the case is underway and they may file a supplementary charge sheet soon. They had said that only the operative portion of the charge sheet was filed before the court on March 10. CBI in its FIR filed on September 3, 2012, had named Navabharat Power Pvt Ltd, its two directors along with some unknown public servants of the Ministry of Coal and others in the case. The FIR was lodged after a preliminary enquiry was initiated by CBI on a reference by the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC). In the FIR, CBI had also accused unknown officials of the Coal Ministry of entering into conspiracy and “wilfully” not scrutinising documents to allow “undue advantage” for the company in getting the blocks. PTI