NEW DELHI: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Thursday said that it has arrested seven accused including two then General Managers of the Eastern Coalfields Limited (ECL) in connection with the illegal coal mining and theft case.
CBI spokesperson RC Joshi said that the agency has arrested Tanmay Das, the then Chief Manager/HOD (Security), ECL HQ (now retired as GM Security, MCL Singrauli), Debashis Mukherjee, the then Security Sub-Inspector, ECL Kajora/Jhanjra area (Now working as Security Inspector ECL Jhanjra), Sushanta Banerjee, the then GM Satgram Area ECL (Now retired as GM, ECL Satgram), Subhas Chandra Moitra, the then Project Officer, Nimcha Group of Mines, Satgram Area ECL (now working as GM, ECL Satgram Area), Mukesh Kumar, the then Manager(Security) ECL HQ, Sanctoria (now working as Manager Security, Central Hospital Kalla), Rinku Behera, the then Security Sub-Inspector, Satgram Area ECL (now working as Security Inspector MCL Sambalpur) and Abhijit Mallik, the then GM, Satgram Area ECL (Now retired as GM, ECL Satgram).
Joshi said that all the arrested accused were produced today before the Special Court at West Bengal’s Asansol and were remanded to five days of police custody.
The CBI registered the case of illegal coal mining on November 27, 2020, on the allegations that the public servants of ECL including security personnel, private person and unknown officials including of CISF, Railway, other departments and unknown others entered into conspiracy during May 2020 and onwards and in pursuance of the said conspiracy, they fraudulently misappropriated coal from the coal reserve of leasehold areas under the dominion of ECL and also from the coal stock parked in the Railway sidings for sale and supply.
The official said that the accused had obtained an undue advantage in the form of huge and regular cash amount as bribe from said private person and facilitated misappropriation of coal from the ECL leasehold area and corresponding railway siding and thereby extended undue protection and patronage to the illegal coal syndicate being run by the said private person.
Earlier, CBI had also conducted searches at various places including in the States of West Bengal, Jharkhand, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh at the premises of the accused.
In November 2020, the CBI raided the offices and homes of alleged racket ‘kingpin’ Anup Majhi alias Lala in Asansol, Durgapur, and Raniganj in Burdwan district, as well as at Bishnupur in Kolkata’s adjoining South 24-Parganas district.
Searches were also carried out at houses of some accomplices of Majhi, who runs his illegal operations at the opencast colliery belts along the Bengal-Jharkhand border.