WCL scam: CBI to hire technical experts

Nagpur: The Central bureau of Investigation's (CBI) anti-corruption wing of Nagpur is set to hire technical experts in mining technology to help investigate the crime in which WCL, Coal India Limited's (CIL) subsidiary, suffered a loss of Rs28.24 crore.

An offence against 11 personnel, including six general managers (GM), was registered on October 10 in connection with the case.

CBI Nagpur, which conducted searches after registering the offence, has collected substantial documents in addition to the ones already furnished to them by the WCL's vigilance department. The department had conducted preliminary inquiry into the excess reporting of overburden (OB) removal at Sasti open crust mine at Ballarpur area of Chandrapur between January 2012 and June 2015 leading to the financial loss.

The searches were conducted at the offices and residential quarters of the present crop of officials named in the FIR.

On the basis of the criteria laid down in 'New code for Uniform System of Maintenance, Control and Verification of coal stock in all mines of CIL' made effective from 2012, the violations were measured as a background for registering the offence. However, a section of CBI believes that such scams of OB removal may have been taking place earlier too which were either intentionally ignored or overlooked.

The present scam had come to fore due to the sincere work of mine surveyor Ram Naresh Ram, who had presented reports mentioning major variations in the OB removal as per the record and actual work done. Surprisingly, the same report of Ram was certified by many officials.

ranging from colliery manager to the sub-area manager as well as the higher supervisory officials such as area survey managers and GMs (operations). However, none took corrective measures for reasons best known to them.

The then GM (operations) SK Shrivastava, now posted at vigilance department of WCL headquarters in Nagpur, was also not spared in the FIR by CBI.

As the probe is set to pick up pace after Diwali, CBI may form several teams to investigate each aspect of the scam involving more than 37 lakhs cubic meters OB which had escalated the cost manifold. Superintendent of police (CBI) Vijayendra Bidari and addl SP SD Mishra would supervise the probe with the help of legal and technical experts' team.