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C’garh coal scam: ED names 2 Congress MLAs, IAS officer in second charge sheet
Advocate Saurabh Pandey representing the economic intelligence agency said that the 280 pages charge sheet was filed before special Prevention of Money Laundering Act court judge Ajay Singh Rajput on Friday
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Friday named two Congress MLAs and one IAS officer in its second supplementary charge sheet in a money laundering case related to an alleged coal levy scam in Chhattisgarh.
A total of eleven people have been named in the charge sheet so far, including IAS officer Ranu Sahu, who is currently in jail.
Advocate Saurabh Pandey representing the economic intelligence agency said that the 280 pages charge sheet was filed before special Prevention of Money Laundering Act court judge Ajay Singh Rajput on Friday.
“The two MLAs – Devendra Yadav and Chandradev Rai are named in the chargesheet,” said Pandey.
The ED in May had seized 90 immovable assets, including luxurious vehicles, jewellery and cash worth over Rs.51 crore belonging to Yadav, Rai and others in the alleged scam.
“We also charge sheeted IAS officer Ranu Sahu and his brother Piyush Sahu. Ranu was then a Korba collector when the scam took place. The other important other accused are Nikhil Chandrakar and Manish Upadhayay who is close to kingpin Suryakant Tiwari,” said Pandey while speaking to the media on Saturday.
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 Sameer Vishnoi, businessman Sunil Agrawal, Suryakant Tiwari and his uncle Laxmikant Tiwari, all arrested earlier by the ED, were named as accused.
Later, the first supplementary charge sheet was filed on January 30 this year in which Saumya Chaurasia, former deputy secretary to chief minister Bhupesh Baghel, and six others, including two mining officers, were named as accused. Chaurasia was arrested in December last year.
The ED had in a statement claimed that a “massive scam” was taking place in coal transportation in Chhattisgarh, under which a “cartel” of politicians, officers and others was allegedly running a “parallel system of extorting illegal levy”, which is generating about Rs.2-3 crore daily.
The anti-money laundering probe agency has 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.
In December 2022, the ED arrested Chaurasia in the case and alleged that Chaurasia‘s WhatsApp chats retrieved by Income Tax Department revealed that she was sharing all the government’s confidential information with Tiwari, who was not even attached to her office for any official work.
