New Delhi, Sep 10 A Delhi court on Thursday accepted a closure report filed by the CBI in a case alleging irregularities in the allocation of coal blocks to Nippon Denro Ispat Limited (NDIL), noting that no evidence of criminal conspiracy, cheating or corruption was found against the company or any public servant.
Special CBI Judge Virender Kumar Kharta was hearing protest petitions filed by two Congress leaders, Sandeep Dixit and Manickam Tagore, who had sought either the summoning of the accused or a further probe into the matter.
The petitions were filed against the Central Bureau of Investigation's (CBI) closure report dated December 23, 2023.
The agency's report had said that after the probe, no offence of conspiracy, cheating and abuse of official positions was found to have been committed by any public servant or private entity, including NDIL.
The case pertained to the allocation of coal blocks in Maharashtra, including Lohara, Baranj, Bander and Kilhoni, to NDIL between 1993 and 1998 for a proposed 1,000-MW power project.
The CBI's probe was initiated on a complaint from six members of Parliament (MPs) to the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) in 2012.
In its order passed on Wednesday, the judge said, "This court does not find any reason to differ from the conclusion arrived at by the investigating agency, CBI. Prima facie, no offence has been committed in the present case and there is no sufficient material on record to proceed against the proposed accused persons."
"Accordingly, the present closure report filed on behalf of the CBI is hereby accepted. The protest petitions are hereby dismissed," he added.
The court noted that NDIL has ceased to exist as a legal entity and that after a series of mergers, it was renamed Ispat Industries Limited, taken over by JSW Steel in 2010 and finally, dissolved in 2012 after merging with JSW Steel.
Citing a 2024 Supreme Court verdict, the court held that a company that no longer exists cannot be summoned or prosecuted and its past liability cannot be transferred to the entity that took it over.
The court also rejected the complainants' argument that the company had misrepresented having a tie-up with Japan's Mitsui and Co. to secure the blocks, noting that no such foreign collaboration was cited as a basis for the final allocation notification issued in 1996.
It also said that allocating the Kilhoni block to the company before formally including it in the captive-mining category was not barred by any rule and that the Union Ministry of Coal was aware that Central India Coal Company Limited (CICCO) was a company of NDIL, having a unified management and the same office address.
"Captive coal mining means mining coal from a coal block for the exclusive use of the said coal by the mining company or its associated company.
"In the present case, the 13th Screening Committee vide its decision dated August 24, 1988, allotted the Kilhoni Block to M/s Nippon Denro Ispat Ltd and issued directions to Coal India Ltd (CIL) to include Kilhoni Block in the list of captive mining blocks," the court said.
It said CIL had informed the coal ministry that it had included the Kilhoni coal block of Western Coal Fields (WCL) in the list of captive-mining coal blocks for allotting the same to NDIL for its 1,000-MW Bhadrawati Thermal Power Station (TPS).
The court underlined that the government suffered no financial loss, noting that the company had deposited more than Rs 1.22 crore towards the blocks, an amount that was never refunded even after it surrendered the Kilhoni block a year later, without ever taking physical possession of it.
The CBI registered a case against NDIL and unidentified public servants in December 2019 under Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 120B (criminal conspiracy) and 420 (cheating), besides Prevention of Corruption Act provisions.
