Hindalco Case: CBI says it has dirt on officials, private parties

This comes less than a month after the CBI filed a “detailed and comprehensive” closure report in the case on October 21.

Contradicting its earlier stand, the CBI told the special court on Monday that there is “prima facie” material against “private parties” and “some government officials” to take cognizance of offences in the case related to the allocation of Talabira II coal blocks in Orissa to Hindalco, owned by the Kumar Mangalam Birla group.

This comes less than a month after the CBI filed a “detailed and comprehensive” closure report in the case on October 21.

Special Public Prosecutor R S Cheema told Special Judge Bharat Parashar on Monday that prima facie, there is enough material on record to take cognizance of various offences under the Prevention of Corruption Act and IPC, against private parties and “some” public servants. He, however, did not directly name former Coal Secretary P C Parakh, who is one of the main accused in the case.

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When contacted, Parakh told The Indian Express: “I don’t know what evidence they are talking about. The CBI spent one full year in investigating the case, I don’t know what fresh evidence they have.”

During the court proceedings today, the judge asked Cheema if the CBI was ready with the relevant documents. Cheema replied that some further investigations were required. The court is set to take up the matter on November 25.

On October 21, the CBI filed a revised final closure report after the court pulled up the agency over the “missing documents” in the case.

On September 12, the court had asked the CBI to file the “relevant documents” after the investigating officer failed to submit the primary evidence containing the original minutes of the screening committee meetings in the case.

Kaunain Sheriff M

Kaunain Sheriff M is an award-winning investigative journalist and the National Health Editor at The Indian Express. He is the author of Johnson & Johnson Files: The Indian Secrets of a Global Giant, an investigation into one of the world’s most powerful pharmaceutical companies. With over a decade of experience, Kaunain brings deep expertise in three areas of investigative journalism: law, health, and data. He currently leads The Indian Express newsroom’s in-depth coverage of health. His work has earned some of the most prestigious honours in journalism, including the Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism, the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) Award, and the Mumbai Press Club’s Red Ink Award. Kaunain has also collaborated on major global investigations. He was part of the Implant Files project with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which exposed malpractices in the medical device industry across the world. He also contributed to an international investigation that uncovered how a Chinese big-data firm was monitoring thousands of prominent Indian individuals and institutions in real time. Over the years, he has reported on several high-profile criminal trials, including the Hashimpura massacre, the 2G spectrum scam, and the coal block allocation case. Within The Indian Express, he has been honoured three times with the Indian Express Excellence Award for his investigations—on the anti-Sikh riots, the Vyapam exam scam, and the abuse of the National Security Act in Uttar Pradesh. ... Read More

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