Shagun Roy, Pune
Former Rajya Sabha member Vijay Darda and his son, Devendra Darda, were sentenced to four years in prison by a Delhi court on Wednesday. The case pertained to irregularities in the allocation of a coal block in Chhattisgarh. Manoj Kumar Jayaswal, the director of JLD Yavatmal Energy Pvt. Ltd., also received a four-year jail term, while H C Gupta, the former coal secretary, along with two other officials, K S Kropha and K C Samaria, received a three-year jail sentence. “Convicts Manoj Kumar Jayaswal, Vijay Darda, and Devendra Darda are taken into custody and sent to jail to serve the sentence,” the judge stated.
Additionally, the court imposed a fine of Rs. 50 lakh on M/s JLD Yavatmal. This month, it seems, a special judge, Sanjay Bansal, found them guilty under Sections 120B (criminal conspiracy) and 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) of the Indian Penal Code and the Prevention of Corruption Act. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) stated that this marked the 13th conviction in the coal allocation scam, which had shaken then-Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government in 2012.
The judge also made a statement saying, “The present case relates to the allocation of a coal block. The convicts had obtained the said block by committing cheating with the government of India. The prosecution is justified in saying that the loss to the nation was huge”.
During the sentencing proceedings, the CBI sought the maximum punishment, alleging that Darda and his son Devender had met former CBI director Ranjit Sinha at his residence to obstruct the investigation. The Supreme Court had formed a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to look into Sinha’s involvement in alleged attempts to influence the probe in the coal scam cases.
Furthermore, the CBI’s senior Public prosecutor, A. P. Singh, claimed that a witness in the case stated that he had been threatened by Jayaswal, who tried to dissuade him from testifying against him.