New Delhi: Former coal secretary Mr Parakh said the CBI was indulging in a “witch-hunt”, and has focused on problems faced by bureaucrats while serving ministers and politicians, accusing Mr Sinha of having acted without a “proper understanding” of the facts, rules and laws.
The CBI director, refuting Mr Parakh’s allegations, said the charges against him were baseless. Mr Sinha told this newspaper on Sunday: “I have gone through the book. I can reply to all the accusations point by point. Since the case is being monitored by the Supreme Court, I am not in a position to comment on the case.” He added that it was a “typical babu book”, where the author has indulged in self-glorification.The CBI had on October 15, 2013 booked industrialist Kumar Mangalam Birla, chairman of the Aditya Birla Group, and Mr P.C. Parakh, former coal secretary, for alleged irregularities in allocation of two Orissa-based coal blocks to his (Birla) firm Hindalco in 2005.
Mr Parakh, a former IAS officer from Andhra Pradesh cadre, questioned the CBI’s decision to register a case against him and Mr Birla for alleged conspiracy in handling over the Talabira-II coal block to Hindalco and not registering a case against Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who was in charge of the coal ministry at that time. The former coal secretary also raised nine questions in the book, among others asking why the PMO’s files were not scrutinised before naming him in the FIR.
He said the CBI was an organisation that did not have any expertise to tackle such cases.
“If the allocation of Talabira-II to Hindalco was undue favour, why were all the 200 coal blocks allocated to private companies not considered undue favour?”. He said the CBI was not equipped to find out the truth.
“Its expertise lies in fixing and unfixing people. The CBI is almost totally staffed with police officers who have little or no exposure to policy formulation and implementation,” he added.
The former coal secretary said when he was asked to join the investigation in the preliminary enquiry stage, he had expected the CBI director or an officer one or two ranks below him to interact with him. “Certainly not inspectors of police who do not understand the difference between a coal block and a coal mine.”
