ED searches premises of Raipur mayor Aijaz Dhebar in Chhattisgarh coal levy scam

Paramilitary forces were also seen at the premises of Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer Anil Tuteja on Wednesday morning

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) carried out searches on the premises of Raipur mayor Aijaz Dhebar and his brother Anwar on Wednesday, the second consecutive day of its raids in connection with the alleged coal levy scam involving officials, businessmen and politicians of the ruling Congress in Chhattisgarh.

Raipur mayor Aijaz Dhebar. (File/ANI)

On Wednesday morning, paramilitary forces were also seen at the premises of Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer Anil Tuteja and liquor businessman Baldev Singh Bhatia, but no official statement was issued by state police or central agency.

The searches against a senior Indian Police Service (IPS) officer and other senior political leaders in Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh started on Tuesday and it is still in process.

Officials familiar with the matter said about a dozen premises related to Chhattisgarh Congress treasurer Ramgopal Agrawal and arrested coal businessman Sunil Agarwal, IPS officer and commissioner of Transport and Public Relations Dipanshu Kabra, besides a few others in Raipur, Bhilai, Durg and Mahasamund in Chhattisgarh and in Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh were searched.

A businessman, Kamal Sharda’s premises was also searched by ED, they said. HT attempted to call Agarwal, Sharda and Kabra but has not received any response.

Chhattisgarh chief minister Bhupesh Baghel alleged that the agency is only targeting non-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ruled states and it appears that ED does not have offices in the BJP-ruled states.

“The ED has once again conducted raids in Chhattisgarh. No section is left which has not been raided be it industrialists, traders, transporters, MLAs, officers or farmers. The ED had not raided in Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Gujarat and Karnataka (all ruled by the BJP). It seems the ED does not have offices there,” said Baghel, adding that the raids are being carried out at the behest of state and central BJP leaders.

The ED’s chargesheet mentioned that an illegal levy of ₹25 per tonne was being extorted for every tonne of coal transported in the state by a cartel involving senior bureaucrats, businessmen, politicians and middlemen.

The ED first arrested IAS officer Sameer Vishnoi, businessman Agrawal who owns Indermani group and Laxmikant Tiwari, uncle of “absconding” businessman and kingpin Suryakant Tiwari, after it launched multi-city raids in the state on October 11. The three have been arrested under criminal sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

Later, Suryakant Tiwari was also arrested by ED and was presented before the court after questioning.

The ED 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 ₹2-3 crore daily.

The 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”.

On December 2, the ED arrested Chhattisgarh chief minister’s deputy secretary Saumya Chaurasia in the case and alleged that her WhatsApp chats retrieved by the Income Tax Department had revealed that she was sharing the government’s confidential information with kingpin Suryakant Tiwari who was not even attached to her office for any official work.

The ED in it documents submitted to the court termed it as a “mega scam”. It said, “(The genesis of the scam of generation of illegal money through transportation of coal was started once the Geology and Mining Department issued a notification on July 15, 2020, signed by Vishnoi in the capacity of director of geology and mining department”.

Over the past six months, the ED has searched the premises of seven Congress leaders, including Ramgopal Agarwal, RP Singh, Devendra Yadav, Chandradev Rai, Girish Dewangan, Vinod Tiwari, along with Aijaz Dhebar.