Former prime minister Manmohan Singh was today summoned by a court as an accused along with five others in a case linked to the coal scam that saw mining rights being assigned without transparency to private firms.
A special CBI court also named Hindalco, its chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla, and former Coal Secretary PC Parakh among the six accused. They have all been asked to appear in court on April 8.
The charges against Dr Singh and the others include criminal conspiracy, corruption and breach of trust.
The court rejected the CBI's finding in its final report that there was "no prosecutable evidence against anyone."
The case involves the allocation of a coal field in Odisha's Talabira block in 2005 to Hindalco, which makes aluminium. At the time, Dr Singh held direct charge of the Coal Ministry.
Hindalco, a part of the $40 billion Aditya Birla Group, had first been refused the coal field it sought, but the decision was later reversed.
The court order says Dr Singh "reopened matter although a screening committee had decided it and didn't refer Hindalco's request to the screening committee." His action, the court said, resulted in loss to the government and windfall profits to a private company.
The scam dubbed "Coal-Gate" surfaced after the national auditor's report in 2012 questioned the government's practice of awarding coal mining blocks at a concession to companies without competitive bidding.
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