House, office of Central Coalfields' chief raided

House, office of Central Coalfields' chief raided
Manoj Prasad

Ranchi, Nov 19: officeand residence of the Central Coalfields Ltd'sChaiman cum Managing Director Balaswami Akla were raided by the CBI onFriday.These premises were raided when Akla was in his official residencenear the railway station here.It is not known who was behind these raids.ButAkla was tipped to become the Coal India Ltd's CMD after the PublicEnterprise Selection Board cleared his name for the prestigious job in July.

Although the CBI,Ranchi branch, SP Narayan Jha refused to talk to the IndianExpress,reports pouring in claimed that the sleuths had seized filesrelating to allotments of coal to two well known coal mafia ofDhanbad-Mahesh Gandhi and Ramesh Gandhi.These allotments are reported tohave been made illegally by Akla during 1991 when he was the Bharat cokingCoal Ltd's GM.

Apart from Akla,there are nine CIL personnel and coal merchants includingtwo Gandhis,Ex coal Controller P.N.Tiwari,Ex Chief GMs[sales]R.P.Srivasravaand A.K.Srivastava,Chief Engineer K.N.Singh and Ex SuperintendingEngineering Sudershan Singh whose offices and residences inranchi,Calcutta,Patna,Bhojpur,Chennai,dhanbad and Kanpur were searched bythe CBI sleuths in their simultaneous raids.

They are alleged to have connived in making alltments of coal to the mafiaand thereby causing loss to the tune of about 90 lakh to the public sectorcoal companies-CCL and BCCL.The case[13A 2000] under various Sectionsincluding 420 and 120 B of the Indian Peanal code has been slapped on them.

Strangely,though none of the CBI sleuths said a word about the seizures madeby them in the aftermath of their raids,reports claimed that cash of aboutRs five lakh,imported liqour-three bottles of packed Jhony walker-1.7 kg ofgold and a dozen pass books of bank accounts were seized from the Ranchibased residence of Akla.

In addition,documents showing Akla owned in the name of his relatives twoflats and 'a palatial house'worth about 50 lakh in Chennai were reportedlyseized.However no arrest has been made so far.