New Delhi: The CBI Special Court here will pass order on sentence against former Union Minister and ex-Odisha MLA Dilip Ray and five others in the Jharkhand coal scam on October 26. All of them have been convicted in the case. The sentencing was earlier scheduled to take place today. Judge Bharat Parashar has directed for the physical presence of all convicts. The judge also ordered for taking all COVID-19 precautions.
The court had on October 6 convicted Ray, who was the Minister of State (MoS) for Coal in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, and five others in the coal block allocation case, noting that they conspired together, beyond all reasonable doubt, to procure allocation of the coal block.
The case pertains to the allocation of 105.153 hectares of non-nationalized and abandoned coal mining area in Jharkhand’s Giridih district to Castron Technologies Limited by the 14th Screening Committee of the Ministry of Coal in 1999. Besides Ray, two former senior officials of the Ministry of Coal — Pradip Kumar Banerjee, the then Additional Secretary and Nitya Nand Gautam, former advisor (Projects), Castron Technologies Limited and its director Mahendra Kumar Agarwalla and Castron Mining Limited have also been found guilty.