New Delhi, Dec 11 (IANS) A special CBI court in Patna on Thursday convicted and sentenced a former executive engineer and a transporter for their roles in a nearly three-decade-old bitumen scam that caused significant losses to the Bihar government.  

The case, originally lodged in 1996, involved large-scale misappropriation of bulk bitumen meant for road construction work.

According to the CBI, the court has sentenced Baikunth Nath Sharma, then Executive Engineer of the Road Construction Division (RCD) in Biharsharif, to one year of rigorous imprisonment along with a fine of Rs 35,000.

Suresh Kumar Gupta, a private transporter associated with M/s Tirupati Transport Agency, has been handed three years of rigorous imprisonment and a fine of Rs 1.5 lakh.

The case was initially registered at the Banka Town Police Station (FIR No. 289/96) before being transferred to the CBI in February 1997 on the directions of the Patna High Court.

Investigators found that the transporter, responsible for delivering bulk bitumen to the RCD Banka division, supplied substantially less material than what had been lifted as per the supply order.

“The said transporter supplied less quantity than the actual lifted quantity as per the supply order and misappropriated a total quantity of 287.625 Metric Tons (MT)of bulk bitumen costing Rs 14.38 Lakhs,” the CBI said in its press note.

After completing the investigation, the CBI filed a chargesheet in February 2002 against Gupta, Sharma, and two other government officials – Balmiki Chaudhary, a junior engineer, and Raghunandan Singh, an assistant engineer/SDO – both of whom died during the course of the trial.

Following years of legal proceedings, the CBI court pronounced its verdict on Thursday, holding the surviving accused guilty of criminal misconduct and fraud.

Notably, a special CBI court in Ahmedabad on Tuesday sentenced three individuals to three years’ imprisonment for cheating the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) of nearly Rs. 67 lakh in 2011.

–IANS

sas/dan