Delhi HC suspends jail term for former Union Minister Dilip Ray

New Delhi: Bringing relief to former Union Minister of State for Coal Dilip Ray, the Delhi High Court today suspended the three-year jail term awarded to him by a Special CBI Court on Monday.

Special Judge Bharat Parashar yesterday awarded the three-jail term to Ray in connection with the Jharkhand coal scam case. However, he was granted bail later in the day on basis of a bail bond of Rs 1 lakh.

Ray was the Minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government in 1999. The case pertains to allocation of 105.153 hectares of non-nationalised and abandoned coal mining area in Jharkhand’s Giridih district in favour of Castron Technologies Limited by 14th Screening Committee of the Ministry of Coal in 1999.

On October 6, the court had convicted Ray and three others in the case, noting that they conspired together beyond shadows of all reasonable doubts to procure allocation of the coal block.

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, its director Mahendra Kumar Agarwalla and Castron Mining Limited have also been found guilty.

The Special Judge also awarded three years term each to two senior officials of the Ministry of Coal at that time — Pradip Kumar Banerjee and Nitya Nand Gautam — and Castron Technologies Limited’s Director Mahendra Kumar Agarwalla.

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