No criminality, says Delhi court, closes Hindalco coal case

NEW DELHI: A Delhi court has closed a coal block allocation case registered by CBI more than a decade ago against Hindalco Industries and discharged the company and its former president and CEO S K Tamotia and former general manager (Corporate Affairs) PRS Mani, reports Koushiki Saha.

Special judge (PC Act) Dheeraj Mor held that prima facie, no case of criminal breach of trust, cheating or criminal conspiracy was made out, and CBI failed to establish any illegality by the accused. The accused are entitled to be discharged as there is “neither any evidence on record nor any justifiable reason to infer that they entered into criminal conspiracy to commit any illegal act”, the court said in its May 30 order.

The case related to the allocation of Talabira-I coal block in Odisha to Hindalco in 1994, with the FIR filed in Jan 2015. CBI alleged the company violated allocation conditions by using coal from the block in its existing 67.5 MW captive power plant at Hirakud instead of limiting its use to proposed power projects.

CBI alleged that the company extracted 4.80 million tonnes of coal beyond its estimated reserves of 15 million tonnes, deriving undue gains. The court, however, found that the restriction cited by CBI was included in the original allocation letter but not in the mining lease executed between Odisha govt and Hindalco in 2003. It held that the mining lease governed the legal rights and rejected allegation of misleading representations.