**Bhubaneswar:** As scheduled earlier, the Special CBI Court on Wednesday (April 26) framed charges against former Union Coal Minister Dilip Ray for allegedly flouting rules in awarding the Brahmadiha coal block in Jharkhand’s Giridih district to a private company, Castron Technologies, in 1999.
As per media reports, the former Union Coal Minister in the then BJP-led NDA Government and currently a BJP MLA of Odisha’s Rourkela assembly segment will now face trial on corruption charges.
As per the Special CBI Court’s order on April 7 this year, the charges were formally framed against Ray and other accused today.
Ray was reportedly present in the court.
Later in his media reaction to the charges framed against him, Dilip Ray said, “UPA Government utilised CBI against me to settle political scores.”
He also added, “Have faith in legal system which is why didn’t file discharge petition.”
Prominent among the five other accused are Pradip Kumar Banerjee, Nitya Nand Gautam and Mahendra Kumar Aggarwalla, as per media reports.
While Banerjee was the then Additional Secretary in the Coal Ministry, Gautam was the former Advisor in the Ministry and Aggarwalla was the Director of the accused company Castron Technologies’, said the media reports.
Charges under Sections 120-B (criminal conspiracy), 420 (cheating) and 13(1)(d) of the Prevention of Corruption Act for abusing of position by a public official have been preferred by the CBI, the media reports added.
As per the media reports, the CBI filed the chargesheet in December 2015 following which the Special CBI Court took cognizance of the case on January 15, 2016.
The media reports added that the Special CBI Court in its order on January 15, 2016 had observed that the decisions by Ray and the accused civil servants in 1999 were made ‘without keeping public interest in mind’.
The Court in its order had also observed that the accused company “cheated the government by unlawfully obtaining the allocation of the impugned coal block while entering into a criminal conspiracy with the public servants,” the media reports quoted.