Ex-Union Minister Dilip Ray sentenced to jail

NEW DELHI: A Special CBI court on Monday sentenced former Union Minister Dilip Ray to three-years imprisonment in a coal block allocation case. Ray was the Minister in the AtalBihari Vajpayee government in 1999.

The case pertains to allocation of 105.153 hectares of non-nationalised and abandoned coal mining area in Jharkhand's Giridih district in favour of Castron Technologies Limited by 14th Screening Committee of the Ministry of Coal in 1999.

Special Judge Bharat Parashar also awarded three years term each to two senior officials of the Ministry of Coal at that time — Pradip Kumar Banerjee and NityaNandGautam — and Castron Technologies Limited Director Mahendra Kumar Agarwalla. The judge also imposed a fine of Rs 10 lakh on them, Rs. 60 lakh on Castron Technologies Limited and Rs. 10 lakh on Castron Mining Limited. The CBI had earlier urged the court to award life imprisonment to Ray and other convicts to send a message to the society as white-collar crimes were on a rise.

The convicts had requested the court to take a lenient view in respect of their old age and prior clean antecedents. On October 6, the court had convicted them in the case, noting that they conspired together beyond shadows of all reasonable doubts to procure allocation of the coal block. (IANS)

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