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Police busts coal racket in Bhalua

A special police task force conducted a raid at a hotel in Bhalua village, under Chouparan police station on NH-2 and busted a coal racket worth Rs 500 to 1000 crore on Saturday.

"We had information that several coal-laden trucks, going to Bihar, UP, Punjab and other states, were stopping at that hotel to collect fake challans of Bharat Coking Coal Limited and Central Coalfield Limited along with stamps issued by the office of the deputy commissioner, before entering the integrated check-post," said SP (Hazaribag), Manoj Kaushik at a press conference.

The task force comprised the officer-in-charge of SC/ST police station, Ramdayal Munda, OC (Barkatha) Nawal Kishore and OC (Chouparan) Suresh Ram.

Kaushik said, "There was a special room which was being used for the purpose. We seized 3 cell-phones, printers, laptops and arrested the two men. They were identified as Arvind Kumar of Chandauli in UP and Sudhir Kumar Singh of Udro in Bihar."

"We also found challans of fake transport companies, fleet owners and transport contractors. The challans had official stamp of the deputy commissioner, commercial taxes of the state government," the SP said.

The duo has disclosed names of kingpins of the nationwide coal smuggling racket to police. However, Kaushik refused to name them. "We will nab them soon from their hideouts," he added.

The SP said, "We will find out whether the staff of the integrated checkposts are in league with the coal racketeers or not. If we find that these vehicles were allowed to cross the checkposts with fake permits, we will lodge an FIR against those found responsible."

Source: The Times of India