TNI Bureau: The Special CBI Court in New Delhi on Monday sentenced former Union Minister of State (MoS) of Coal, Dilip Ray to three years of imprisonment in connection with alleged irregularities in the allocation of a Jharkhand coal block in 1999. The court also imposed a fine of Rs 10 lakh on Ray. He was convicted by the Delhi special court on October 6.
Meanwhile, Dilip Ray has been granted bail. He will appeal against the sentence in the Higher Court.
Besides Dilip Ray, the Special CBI court also handed three years’ jail to two other senior officials who were also convicted recently for their role in the case.
Special CBI Judge Bharat Parashar had framed charges of cheating, criminal conspiracy and criminal breach of trust against Dilip Ray, two senior officials of the Ministry of Coal (MoC) at that time, Pradip Kumar Banerjee and Nitya Nand Gautam, Castron Technologies Ltd (CTL), its director Mahendra Kumar Agarwalla and Castron Mining Ltd (CML), in 2017.
Dilip Ray was Minister of State for Coal in Atal Bihari Vajpayee Government when BJD and BJP were allies. Banerjee was the then Additional Secretary in MoC and Nitya Nand Gautam was the Advisor (Projects).
Ray have been found guilty of offences under 120-B/420 IPC and 13 (1) (d) r/w Section 13 (2) P.C. Act, 1988.