By IANS,
Panaji: A senior Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader and several top bureaucrats were Tuesday booked for allegedly being involved in permitting illegal mining of bauxite in the state.
The Crime Branch Tuesday booked NCP national secretary Jitendra Deshprabhu, Director Mines and Geology Arvind Lolienkar and Chief Conservator of Forests Shashi Kumar for defrauding the state exchequer of Rs.50 crore by allowing the illegal mining of bauxite.
The first information report (FIR) also charges a son of a “senior minister” as one of the accused, but does not name him.
Police were forced to file an FIR on the directions of a local court following a complaint by right to information (RTI) activists Pradeep Kakodkar, Kashinath Shetye and Ketan Govekar.
Deshprabhu has already been fined Rs.1.72 crore by the state mining department for illegally extracting nearly 50,000 tonnes of bauxite from an open cast mine, located in his property at Korgao village in Pernem.