RANCHI: Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Tuesday, October 7 raided multiple locations across separate places belonging to state government officials, a lawyer and a land broker in connection with a money laundering case. As per the information, raids were conducted in Dhanbad, Patna and state’s capital Ranchi, during which the officials have seized huge cash haul from residence of one of the state government official.
The raids were conducted following a land broker Sanjay Kumar Pandey approached the police with a complaint, alleging a lawyer Sujit Kumar for cheating and extorting crores of money from him and other officials for managing/influencing ED’s officials to avoid legal proceeding against them in the alleged land scam.
According to the FIR filed by Pandey at Pandara police station, Kumar had allegedly promised Pandey and other officials namely, Diwakar Prasad Dwivedi, former Circle Officer (CO) and incumbent District Transport Officer (DTO), Jay Kumar Ram, CO, Kanke and Prabhat Bhushan, former CO, Namkum to remove their names from the ED’s charge sheet.
Following the deal, all of these individuals have allegedly provide a sum of Rs 5.71 crore to Kumar to evade their names from appearing in the charge sheet. However, after the ED named all these individuals in the charge sheet, they have requested Kumar to return the money against which Kumar had provided them with bank cheques and his vehicle. Though despite of the assurance to return the money, tension escalated between Pandey and Kumar after which the former lodged a complaint against Kumar.
After the revelation of the matter, the ED on Tuesday conducted raids at multiple locations including of premises of Pandey who is considered close to Kamlesh Kumar, a real estate businessman arrested by ED in the alleged land scam case, leading to recovery of case from DTO, Dwivedi’s residence in Dhanbad.
Meanwhile, lawyer Sujit Kumar has also lodged a counter complaint, accusing Pandey and his associates for abducting and extorting money from him. The charges of both the parties are being investigated by the authorities.
Who is real estate businessman Kamlesh Kumar
Photo-journalist turned real estate businessman Kamlesh Kumar was apprehended by the ED on July 26 this year. Kamlesh had earlier been served five summons by the agency, however he only appeared before the agency on July 26, refusing to reply to all the previous notices by ED.
Earlier, the agency raided premises linked to Kumar on June 21 which led to recovery of cash accounting of Rs one crore. The officials during the raids had also recovered a pistol and around one hundred cartridges from the Ranchi based premise of Kumar.
ED on June 12 had apprehended one more person in connection with the case linked to alleged grabbing of land in Ranchi’s Badgai region. Shekhar Kushwaha alias Shekhar Mahto was arrested by ED following a brief interrogation after he appeared before the agency’s zonal office at Ranchi on June 12. It was after the arrest of Kushwaha, that the agency raided premises of Kumar. Kushwaha was reportedly connected with other officials named in the alleged land scam.
ED, Ranchi has filed a Prosecution Complaint (PC) against Hemant Soren & four othersin one of the cases of land scam being investigated under the provisions of PMLA, 2002, for acquiring, possessing and concealing the proceeds of crime in the nature of an immovable property…
— ED (@dir_ed) April 4, 2024
The agency filed a supplementary charge sheet before the PMLA court against as many as 10 individuals in connection with its ongoing probe in one of the cases of money laundering linked to the alleged land scam on June 7.
The supplementary charge sheet was filed around a month after the ED filed its initial charge sheet in the case against Chief Minister, Hemant Soren and four others before a special PMLA court on March 30. The agency then submitted that the accused were involved in acquiring, processing and concealing the proceeds of crime in the nature of an immovable property admeasuring 8.8 acres at Bariyatu, Ranchi.
