New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has summoned Jharkhand IAS officer Chhavi Ranjan for questioning later this week in connection with a money laundering investigation linked to alleged illegal land sale, official sources said Monday.
The 2011-batch officer has been asked to depose on April 21 at the federal agency’s office in state capital Ranchi. He was questioned briefly by the agency last week when searches were carried out in this case at his premises and those of some others in Jharkhand, Bihar and West Bengal.
An assistant registrar of assurances of West Bengal government based in Kolkata has also been asked to depose on May 2, the sources said.
The agency had arrested a total of seven people, including a Jharkhand government officer, after these raids. The searches in this case were launched on April 14.
The action was taken under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) and the agency is looking at more than a dozen land deals, including one pertaining to defence land, wherein a group including land mafia, middlemen and bureaucrats allegedly “connived” in forging land deeds and documents from as early as 1932.
Lands of the poor and the downtrodden were “usurped” as part of this fraud, ED sources had said. To launch its investigation under the PMLA, the federal agency took cognisance of a police FIR of forgery of some personal identification documents registered by the civic authorities concerned.
The agency, according to the sources, has recovered a number of fake seals, land deeds and registry documents during the searches.
This is the second case in which a Jharkhand-cadre IAS officer has come under the scanner of the ED. Last year, the ED had raided and arrested IAS officer Pooja Singhal in a money laundering case.
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