Bhubaneswar: The CBI special court of Investigation in Delhi on Monday sentenced former Union coal minister Dilip Ray and two other senior ex-officials to three year prison term in the 1999 coal block allocation scam. Special Judge Bharat Prashar also imposed a fine of Rs 10 lakh on each convicted individual.
Moments after the three were awarded the three-year jail term, the court granted bail to all of them on a bond of Rs 1 lakh each. The three were also given time till November 25 to appeal in the high court.
Mr Ray was minister of state (coal) in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government.
The CBI had asked for life imprisonment for the convicts saying it will set an example for other influential people not to indulge in such scams. The convicts, however, had prayed to the court to be lenient, citing their old age.
On October 6, the court had convicted Mr Ray, two former senior officials of the Union coal ministry — Pradip Kumar Banerjee and Nitya Nand Gautam — in a case pertaining to the allocation of 105.153 hectares of abandoned coal mining area in Brahmadiha coal block in Giridih district of Jharkhand to Castron Technologies Ltd (CTL) in 1999.
Special judge (CBI) Bharat Parashar had held Mr Ray guilty of cheating, criminal conspiracy and breach of trust.
