The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Saturday arrested Chhattisgarh IAS officer Ranu Sahu a day after the central agency raided her premises as part of their investigation into the money laundering case, officials said.
On Friday, the ED had conducted searches at the premises of the IAS officer, senior Congress politician and contractors in Raipur, Bilaspur and Korba districts in connection with the money laundering case.
Ranu Sahu has been arrested in connection with the coal levy case, and the PMLA (Prevention of Money Laundering) court in Raipur granted her custody for three days to the probe agency, said ED’s lawyer Saurabh Pandey.
Ranu Sahu, a 2010-batch IAS officer in the Chhattisgarh cadre, is currently serving as a director in the state’s agriculture department.
Sahu had earlier served as the collector of the Korba and Raigarh districts, both known for their coal reserves.
Notably, Sahu is the second IAS officer in the state to be arrested in connection with the case after 2009 batch IAS officer Sameer Vishnoi was arrested last year.
The central agency had previously raided Sahu’s residence in Raipur and also attached her assets during its earlier investigation into the alleged coal levy scam.
{{/usCountry}}The central agency had previously raided Sahu’s residence in Raipur and also attached her assets during its earlier investigation into the alleged coal levy scam.
{{/usCountry}}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 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 Chhattisgarh chief minister’s deputy secretary Saumya Chaurasia in connection with the money laundering case alleging that Chaurasia’s WhatsApp chats retrieved by the Income Tax Department revealed that she was sharing all the government’s confidential information with kingpin Tiwari who was not even attached to her office for any official work.