Ten teams of the CBI on Wednesday raided houses and offices of seven officials of the Central Coalfields Limited (CCL) in different places of state, including Dhori area of Bermo subdivision, Ramgarh and Dhanbad districts, in connection with investigation related to coal shortage scam of Rs 200 crore.
A CBI team has also raided the office of general manager of the Mahanadi Coalfield Limited U S Singh in Sambalpur district of Odisha, who was earlier posted in CCL, Dhori. The raids were conducted in three cases related to coal shortage in the CCL Dhori area in 2011 January. The CCL vigilance has also busted the scam earlier, said SP CBI Dhanbad P K Manjhi.
Besides Singh, other six officers are A K Choudhary, Virender Singh, S K Singh, D K Jha, Satyajit Kumar and R K Dubna. The CBI has conducted raids at office and house of Jha in Dhanbad. The other team simultaneously conducted raids at residence and office of Dubna in Badkishyal and Satyajit Kumar at Barkakana. All these six officials were posted as manager and project officer in Dhori project of the CCL in 2011 when the irregularities took place.
“There was coal shortage of about 40 to 66% of the overall production in the project, loss of which is assessed to be about Rs 200 crore. Of the three mines of the CCL Dhori, there was shortage of 66.54% coal in Tarmi, 60.44% in Amlo and 44.27% in Kalayani coalfields,” said Manjhi. Sources said the coal shortage was about 13 lakh tones which is one of the biggest scam in the CCL.
The CBI sleuths have recovered several documents related to the case from the residences and offices of the officers. The raids began in the morning and ended in evening at almost all the places. However, the search at Singh’s office in Sambalpur began late and raid continued till late evening “The CBI has taken up the case on a tip off. No arrest has been made but the CBI can also lodge disproportionate assets (DA) case against the officers in this connection,” said Manjhi.
