India's top court closes case against ex-PM Manmohan in coal block allocation case
A bench consisting of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana accepted the CBI's closure report, giving a clean chit to the former prime minister and others
India's Supreme Court today closed a criminal case against former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in a coal block allocation case, while setting aside a summoning order passed by a lower court against him.
A bench consisting of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana accepted the CBI's closure report, giving a clean chit to the former prime minister and others.
The top court said there was no reason for the trial court judge to reject the CBI's closure reports and take cognisance.
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"Due to the unfortunate demise of the appellant, this appeal could be disposed of as infructuous. But with a view to consider the aspect of the learned special judge taking cognisance and summoning the appellant, we have gone through both closure reports filed by CBI."
"Having regard to the relevant parameters consistently laid down by this court on acceptance of reports of the investigating agency, we are satisfied that there was no reason for (special) judge to turn down closure reports of CBI and take cognisance. We allow the appeal and set aside the impugned judgment. As a result, we accept the closure reports of CBI and close the matter," the bench said.
Manmohan Singh, leading industrialist Kumar Mangalam Birla, former Coal Ministry Secretary P C Parakh and three others were summoned as accused by a special court in a coal scam case pertaining to the allocation of the Talabira-II coal block in Odisha in 2005.
Singh had questioned the absence of the mandated sanction for prosecuting public officials such as him and denied any criminality in his decision concerning the coal block allocation.
