Court also granted them time till 25th November to appeal in High Court. Earlier, the Delhi court sentenced the former minister to three-year imprisonment. Also Read: NSA Doval Issues Stern Warning To Enemies, Centre Clarifies Statement Not About China Or LAC
What's the case?
The former union minister has been convicted in the case related to irregularities in the allocation of a Jharkhand coal block in 1999.
A Delhi court had earlier this month reserved the order for October 26 after hearing arguments from the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) as well the convicts. The court directed the convicts to be present before it physically on that date.
Ray was convicted under various sections including 409 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), whci pertains to criminal breach of trust by a public servant.
Who else has been convicted?
Other than Ray, former minister of state (coal) in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, the CBI had sought life imprisonment for other convicts who are senior officials of the Ministry of Coal at that time, Pradip Kumar Banerjee and Nitya Nand Gautam, and Castron Technologies Ltd’s (CTL) director Mahendra Kumar Agarwalla.
This was the first conviction in the coal scam. The judge had said that Ray “dishonestly facilitated the allocation of the abandoned non-nationalised coal mining area in favour of CTL and that too in violation of the direction of law.”
As per the NTDV report, during the hearing, the CBI had sought life imprisonment for the former Union minister and other convicts in the case, arguing that white-collar crimes are on the rise and maximum punishment was required to send a message to society.
The case pertains to the allocation of the Brahmadiha coal block in Giridih in Jharkhand to CTL in 1999.