In a major development that slices through years of accusation and inquiry, a Delhi court has cleared the names of former coal secretary HC Gupta and senior IAS officer KS Kropha in a case tied to the controversial coal block allocations.
The court ruled that neither man could be held criminally liable for decisions made collectively by the screening committee that allocated coal blocks. Special Judge Sanjay Bansal made it clear: mistakes or misjudgments aren’t crimes—especially when no kickbacks were taken or even asked for.
“There is no allegation—let alone evidence—that either Gupta or Kropha asked for or received any illegal gratification,” the court observed, shutting down the prosecution’s attempt to isolate the two as scapegoats for a much broader institutional decision.
The spotlight of this case was the Mednirai Coal Block in Jharkhand, allocated to Kohinoor Steel Pvt Ltd (KSPL). Gupta, at the time, served as coal secretary, and Kropha was joint secretary in the same ministry. The Central Bureau of Investigation had alleged that the duo bent the rules, conspired with company executives, and helped KSPL secure the coal block by overlooking key discrepancies in its application.
The prosecution wanted charges of criminal conspiracy and cheating under the IPC, along with criminal misconduct under the Prevention of Corruption Act. But the Court wasn’t convinced. It noted that the Ministry of Coal wasn’t even responsible for verifying the technical claims made in the applications—that job belonged to other ministries and the state government.
“The Ministry of Steel, which actually had the sectoral expertise, didn’t catch the discrepancies either. So how can the coal ministry be blamed?” the court reasoned.
Gupta and Kropha, therefore, walked out from the shadow of the scam with the charges against them dismissed.
However, it wasn’t a clean sweep for all involved. The court found enough ground to proceed against KSPL and two of its executives—Vijay Bothra and Rakesh Khare—framing charges of cheating and criminal conspiracy.
While the bureaucrats have been spared the grind of a full-blown trial, the corporate players in the saga now face the next phase of legal reckoning.
