A special court in Delhi on Monday sentenced former Coal Secretary HC Gupta, former Joint Secretary KS Kropha and bureaucrat KC Samaria to two years in prison in connection with the coal block allocation scam. The three convicts have also been fined Rs 1 lakh each, reported PTI.
Apart from the three, the court also sentenced the managing director of Kamal Sponge Steel and Power Ltd, PK Ahluwalia, to three years in jail. Ahluwalia will have pay Rs 30 lakh as fine, while the company will have to shell out a penalty of Rs 1 crore.
However, all the convicts were granted bail after Special CBI Judge Bharat Parasher announced the quantum of sentence so that they can appeal to the High Court.
On May 19, the court had found them guilty of cheating and corruption in the allocation of the Rudrapur coal block to KSSPL in Madhya Pradesh. Gupta was the chairperson of a screening committee responsible for coal block allocations between 2006 and 2008 under the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance’s rule.
The scandal had surfaced after the Comptroller and Auditor General found discrepancies in government allocations of coalfields during former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s term that had led to a loss of around Rs 1.86 lakh crore to the national exchequer. Jindal Steel and Power Ltd, Hindalco, Essar Power, Tata Steel and Tata Power were among the 25 companies named as beneficiaries in the CAG report. The CBI had filed a chargesheet in the case in April 2015.
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