Dilip Ray granted bail in coal scam case

New Delhi: Former Union Minister Dilip Ray has been granted bail soon after a Special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Court in New Delhi sentenced him to three years imprisonment on Monday.

The CBI court granted bail to Ray and other individuals, convicted in a Jharkhand coal scam case, on a bail bond of Rs 1 lakh each.

The court also granted them time till November 25 to appeal in the High Court.

Earlier on Monday, the court had sentenced Ray to three year jail-term in a coal scam case pertaining to irregularities in the allocation of a Jharkhand coal block in 1999.

The Special CBI court in Delhi also handed three years’ jail to two senior officials of the Ministry of Coal Pradip Kumar Banerjee and Nitya Nand Gautam, and Castron Technologies Ltd’s (CTL) director Mahendra Kumar Agarwalla.

Dilip Ray was the Minister of State (MoS) for Coal in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA when his party Biju Janata Dal (BJD) was a partner in the alliance government in 1999.