New Delhi: A Delhi court Monday fixed January 8 for considering the plea filed by two public servants, facing prosecution in a coal scam case, seeking alteration of charges framed against them earlier.
Special CBI Judge Bharat Parashar fixed the matter for January 8 after the agency sought adjournment on the ground that senior public prosecutor V K Sharma, who was to advance the arguments, was not available today due to some bereavement in his family.
"Accordingly, as prayed, the matter be now put up for consideration on the application under section 216 CrPC moved on behalf of accused number one and two on January 8, 2015," the judge said.
Both the accused had filed the plea seeking alteration of charges on the ground that the Delhi High Court had recently quashed charges against Prakash Industries Ltd (PIL) and its director who were allegedly involved in the case.
Earlier, CBI had filed its reply to the plea of accused Goutam Kumar Basak and Soumen Chatterjee seeking alteration of charges framed against them and had argued that graft charges should be maintained against them.
CBI, in its reply, had said that charge of public servants abusing official position under Prevention of Corruption Act should be maintained against the two accused persons.
The prosecutor had, however, said the charge of criminal conspiracy under IPC should be recast.
The counsel, appearing for Basak and Chatterjee, had sought time to go through CBI's reply and to argue in the matter.
The counsel, appearing for Executive Secretary Basak and Manager (F&A) Chatterjee of Ministry of Steel's Joint Plant Committee, had told the court that it should alter the charges framed against them as the high court has already quashed charges against PIL and its director (Corporate Affairs) A K Chaturvedi.
He had argued that according to the high court's order, the charge of criminal conspiracy was not made out and CBI should now explain how it would proceed with the trial.
The high court had on September 5 quashed the charges of cheating, forgery and criminal conspiracy framed against PIL and Chaturvedi.
The trial court had framed charges of cheating, forgery and corruption against Basak and Chatterjee for allegedly giving a misleading report on the production capacity of PIL.
The Ministry of Steel's Joint Plant Committee was set up in 1964 by the government for formulating guidelines for production, allocation and pricing of iron and steel and is the only institution which is officially empowered by the Ministry of Steel to collect data on iron and steel industry.
The special court had earlier discharged the firm and its director in view of the high court's order quashing the charges.
According to CBI, on the basis of alleged inflated production figures and "bogus reports" submitted by Prakash Industries Ltd, Basak and Chatterjee, the screening committee allotted the captive coal block at Urtan in Madhya Pradesh and at Vijay Central in Chhattisgarh to Prakash Industries Ltd.
In its charge sheet, CBI had said Prakash Industries Ltd ,in connivance with Hind Energy and Coal Benefication (India) Pvt Ltd and various officials of the Ministry of Coal, Ministry of Steel and JPC, allegedly got allocated the coal blocks "using false and fabricated documents".
It had told the court that on an application by Prakash Industries Ltd in January 1998, Chotia coal mining block at Chhattisgarh too was allotted to it.
The agency had alleged that Prakash Industries Ltd, through its April 12, 2007 application, again applied for allotment of mining block for its steel plant at Champa in Chhattisgarh for expansion of its capacity and to justify its claim, it filed false and fabricated copies of central excise returns showing inflated production figures from December 2007 to March 2008.
CBI's charge sheet had alleged Prakash Industries Ltd had mined coal from Chotia mining block in excess and diverted approximately 50 percent of it to the black market and earned a profit of about Rs 22.7 crore.
