Former PM Manmohan Singh faced heat in coal scam, got relief from SC in 2015
Manmohan Singh, who passed away aged 92 in the national capital on Thursday, had a brush with the justice system when he was summoned as an accused in a coal block allocation case. The Supreme Court, however, intervened and stayed the directive.
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Singh, an astute economist and a stalwart politician, questioned the absence of the mandated sanction for prosecuting public officials like him, and denied any criminality in his decision concerning the coal block allocation.
His appeal in the top court challenged a trial court's March 2015 order that summoned him as an accused in the alleged irregularities over the allotment of Talabira-II coal block to Hindalco.
It said, «The petition raises substantial questions of law which call for an authoritative pronouncement from this court in relation to the interplay between governmental functions and criminal prosecution under the PC (prevention of corruption) Act, especially in cases where there is not even a whiff, let alone an allegation of quid pro quo, and the case is based upon the processes of governmental decisions.»
Trial court judge Bharat Parashar had on March 11, 2015, rejected a CBI closure report and summoned Singh and others as accused persons on April 8 the same year.
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