Delhi court seeks complainants’ response on CBI’s closure report in coal case

A Delhi court on Wednesday sought response of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and Union minister of state for railways and food processing industries, Ravneet Singh Bittu, and six other political leaders, who are the complainants in a case related to the irregularities in the allocation of coal blocks, before considering a closure report filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

Special judge Arun Bhardwaj said, “In the opinion of this court, before considering the closure report, a notice is required to be issued to the aforesaid seven complainants in the matter....Let a notice of this closure report be issued to the seven complainants referred above returnable on 20.08.2024.”

The court was hearing a case registered by CBI against M/s Nippon Denro Ispat Limited and other unknown public servants regarding the allocation and mining of coal blocks.

The court noted that the CBI had filed a closure report after concluding that “no offence of conspiracy, cheating and abuse of official position has been found to have been committed in the case by any public servant or private entity”.

Thus, the court has issued a notice to the complainants — Ravneet Singh Bittu (BJP), Sandeep Dixit (Congress), Harish Chaudhary (Congress), Ch. Lal Singh (Congress), Raghuvir Singh Meena (Congress), Ilyaraj Singh (BJP) and Manick Tagore (Congress) — to hear their stand before considering the closure report.

Former MP Dixit, one of the complainants, had initially filed a complaint to the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC), a copy of which was given by the Director CVC to the CBI.

Dixit filed the complaint with the CVC along with the other six leaders on September 5, 2012, alleging irregularities in allocation of coal blocks during the period 1993-2004. Bittu, who was with the Congress joined the BJP in March this year, while Ilyaraj Singh switched sides from Congress to BJP in 2018.

Dixit had filed another complaint on September 14, 2012, in which he had enclosed a list of the coal blocks that required in-depth investigation on the process and way these coal blocks were allocated. He had enclosed a list of 24 coal blocks with his letter. However, the coal block Kilhoni, which was the subject matter of investigation, was not on the list.

The CVC director sent a copy of the complaint to the CBI directing them to conduct a preliminary enquiry into the case. After receiving the reference from the CVC, a preliminary enquiry was conducted.

The CBI later registered a regular case on December 31, 2019. However, after conducting the investigation a closure report was filed by CBI in December 2023.