Coal scam: Court pulls up CBI for filing illegible documents

New Delhi: The CBI on Monday once again faced the ire of a Delhi court which pulled up the agency for not filing documents in sequence and in a legible condition in a coal blocks allocation case involving Kamal Sponge Steel and Power Ltd and others.

Special CBI Judge Bharat Parashar asked the investigating officer (IO) to file complete documents in a legible condition along with a list of relevant documents on September 24.

The court also directed the IO to submit a short synopsis giving details of the documents filed and their relevance.

"This is ridiculous, no documents are in sequence," the judge said.

The court heard part arguments on the closure report filed by CBI in the FIR in which Kamal Sponge Steel and Power Ltd, its directors, Pavan Ahluwalia, Kamaljeet Ahluwalia, Prashant Ahluwalia, its senior official Amit Goyal and some unknown government servants were named as accused for allegedly misrepresenting facts, including inflated net worth, to acquire coal blocks.

During the hearing, the court raised questions over CBI filing closure report against the firm's chartered accountant Amit Goyal as he was the one who had appeared before the Screening Committee, which dealt with its application seeking allocation of coal blocks, on behalf of the company.

The court said one of the allegations against the firm and its directors was that they inflated the net worth to acquire coal blocks and Goyal had audited the company's balance sheet so he must be aware of the actual net worth.

"How can you leave Amit Goyal. He had appeared before the screening committee, he knew about the net worth of the company. No representation was made by the company before the screening committee, still it acquired the coal blocks," the court said.

As soon as the day's proceedings began, special public prosecutor R S Cheema introduced to the judge three senior public prosecutors who would be assisting him in the coal scam cases.

Senior public prosecutors V K Sharma, Sanjay Kumar and A P Singh, who were appointed in the case by the Supreme Court following Cheema's request, assumed the charge in the case.

Read: Supreme Court now brushes CBI chief Ranjit Sinha with coalgate

The court had earlier asked CBI to clarify as to what evidence "it could not collect" during probe to substantiate its findings recorded in FIR in a coal blocks allocation case against Kamal Sponge Steel and Power Ltd and others.

It had also asked the IO to file all the documents related to the case before it.

After the probe, CBI had filed a closure report saying they have not found sufficient evidence against the firm and its directors to proceed with the case.

Read: Coal scam: What was the hurry to close case against Kumar Mangalam Birla, Court asks CBI

The agency in its closure report has said that the acts of Coal Ministry officials in not checking the applications with regard to their eligibility and completeness were not found to be in pursuant to "criminal conspiracy".

CBI had earlier claimed that officials of the firm had furnished unaudited balance sheet and had allegedly inflated its capacity to produce sponge iron by 25 per cent.