A special CBI court in Ranchi on Friday sentenced four transporters to three years of imprisonment under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) in a bitumen scam case. The judgment came almost 29 years after the case was registered by the central agency.
Court Ruling
The special CBI judge, Yogesh Kumar, sentenced transporters Vinay Kumar Sinha, Ashish Maitey, Raj Kumar Roy, and Ranjan Pradhan in the case. The CBI public prosecutor, Kushboo Kumari, produced 29 witnesses to establish the case against the accused.
Acquittals and Deaths
In his order, the judge acquitted officers of the road construction department, including the then executive engineer S K Das, assistant engineer S M Aurangzeb, and junior engineer N C Prasad, due to lack of evidence against them. There were nine accused in the case, but Md Istiaq and B P Gupta passed away during the trial.
Details of the Scam
The accused transporters had, through three supply orders, lifted a total of 1,000 metric tonnes (MT) of bitumen from Haldia in West Bengal. However, they supplied only 850 MT to the national highway Barhi during the period between 1992 and 1994. The value of the misappropriated bitumen at that time was Rs 9 lakh.
