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Chhattisgarh court issues notices to 2 Congress MLAs, 7 others in coal levy scam
The court has asked the nine accused, including the two Congress MLAs, to appear before it on October 25
A Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court in Chhattisgarh’s Raipur has issued notices to nine accused, including two ruling Congress MLAs, in connection with a money laundering case related to alleged coal levy scam in the state.
They have been asked to appear before the court on October 25.
“The special court on Saturday registered the second supplementary prosecution complaint and issued notices to nine of the 11 accused as two accused Ranu Sahu and Nikhil Chandrakar were already arrested in the case. The court has posted the matter for next hearing on October 25 and has asked the nine accused to appear before it in the notices,” Enforcement Directorate (ED)’s lawyer Saurabh Kumar Pandey said in a statement.
In August , ED had filed the second prosecution complaint (charge sheet) in the case in which 11 persons, including two Congress legislators Devendra Singh Yadav (33) and Chandradev Prasad Rai (41) and IAS officer Ranu Sahu (39), were named as accused.
Two of the 11 accused –Ranu Sahu and Nikhil Chandrakar are in jail in the alleged scam.
Pandey said sections 3 and 4 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) imposed in this case are cognizable and non-bailable and therefore, the nine accused, who have not yet been arrested, need to obtain anticipatory bail, otherwise the court may send them to jail if they appear in the court during the hearing.
The court may issue bailable or non-bailable warrants against the nine accused in case they do not appear during the hearing, he added.
Earlier, the federal anti-money laundering probe agency had claimed that a “massive scam” took place between 2019 and 2021 in coal transportation in Chhattisgarh, under which a “cartel” of politicians, officers and others was allegedly running a “parallel system of extorting illegal levy”, generating about ₹2-3 crore daily.
ED has also claimed that the “main kingpin of this scam is Suryakant Tiwari and his associates who entered into a criminal conspiracy to run a parallel system of extorting illegal levy on coal and were doing illegal and unaccounted cash movement”.
The first charge sheet in the case was filed in the special PMLA court in Raipur on December 9 last year, in which IAS officer Vishnoi, businessman Sunil Agrawal, Suryakant Tiwari and his uncle Laxmikant Tiwari, all arrested earlier by ED, were named as accused.
Later, ED filed a first supplementary charge sheet on January 30 this year, naming Chhattisgarh chief minister’s deputy secretary Saumya Chaurasia and six others, including two mining officers, as accused.
On December 2 last year, ED arrested Chaurasia in the case, alleging that her WhatsApp chats retrieved by the Income Tax Department — in an illegal mining case — revealed that the civil servant from the Chhattisgarh Administrative Service was sharing government’s confidential information with kingpin Tiwari, who was not even attached to her office for any official work.
