ED arrests Hemant; aide Champai may take over
Officials said Soren will be produced in a court on Thursday, when the agency will explain the exact charges against him
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) arrested Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) chief Hemant Soren on money laundering allegations minutes after he resigned as chief minister of Jharkhand on Wednesday, even as the state’s ruling alliance picked trusted aide and sitting minister Champai Soren as its next leader and said he enjoyed a comfortable majority.
In the span of a dramatic few hours on Wednesday evening, Soren drove to Raj Bhavan and tendered his resignation even as 47 lawmakers backing the government followed him in three buses to meet governor CP Radhakrishnan.
“With our majority, and all our signatures, we have tried to make Raj Bhavan aware that we have picked Champai Soren as our leader. Champai Soren will be the next CM,” said minister Mithilesh Thakur.
At around 10pm, Soren returned to his residence and then was taken to ED’s Ranchi office, where the 48-year-old leader was arrested under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) in connection with ED’s probe into an alleged land scam in the state, people familiar with the development said.
“We have evidence that Hemant Soren grabbed some land, which was illegally obtained by others through falsified documents,” said an ED officer, who didn’t want to be named.
Soren appeared defiant. “I have always fought and will continue to fight. But I will not compromise,” he posted on X.
Raj Bhavan later released a photo of Soren submitting his resignation to the governor, accompanied by Champai Soren, Left lawmaker Vinod Singh, Congress leader Pradeep Yadav, minister Alamgir Alam, and Rashtriya Janata Dal legislator Satyanand Bhokta. “We have 47 MLAs and we should be allowed to form the government. The governor said that he will check our papers and call us,” said Alam. The assembly strength is 81.
On a tense day in Ranchi, with prohibitory orders clamped across large swathes of the state capital, Soren’s questioning began at 1.15pm at his residence, with ruling party legislators also in the premises. The questioning lasted for seven hours.
The official quoted above said that ED has evidence that Soren is the key beneficiary in alleged land related irregularities in Ranchi, where a network of brokers and businessmen were allegedly working over the years to create fake deeds of landed parcels by forging records in the registrar offices and further selling them off. Officials said Soren will be produced in a court on Thursday, when the agency will explain the exact charges against him.
Soren and the JMM have repeatedly denied the allegations and called them politically motivated, saying that the details of his assets are public.
In the 81-member assembly, the ruling alliance that includes the JMM, Congress, the Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Communist Party of India (Marxist Leninist) has 48 seats while the National Democratic Alliance has 32. One seat is vacant.
All eyes will now be on governor Radhakrishnan. The law and past precedent say he can ask Champai Soren for a fresh letter of support from the lawmakers backing his leadership. Alternatively, he can also tell Champai Soren to prove his majority on the floor of the House, but it could be a contentious directive given that the JMM is, so far, united and the party’s coalition partners have also furnished their support in writing. The Supreme Court’s 2023 judgment in the Shiv Sena case says that the governor must have credible material to substantiate his decision to call for a floor test. The BJP may also move a request in the assembly for a floor test that the speaker – who belongs to the JMM – will take a call on.
To be sure, there is no specific prohibition either in the Constitution or under any statute that mandates a sitting CM to resign after arrest in a criminal case. It is only after their conviction and an imposition of a jail term that they must resign. Some precedents and political prudence have however seen CMs stepping down after their arrests. After an arrest warrant was issued against him in connection with a fodder scam case, Lalu Prasad Yadav chose to resign as the Bihar CM and his wife, Rabri Devi, took over in 1997. On the other hand, J Jayalalithaa served as Tamil Nadu CM for three years while she was being tried in a corruption case and resigned only after she was found guilty in 2001.
Anticipating the arrest, the ruling coalition has already planned shows-of-strength across the state, where assembly elections are due later this year.
Soren is the first former CM arrested by ED.
The trouble began for him in August last year when the federal financial crimes agency asked to question him. The leader didn’t show up and skipped six subsequent summons, before finally agreeing to being questioned on January 20 this year.
Dramatic scenes unfolded in Delhi and Ranchi over the last two days, after ED swooped in on Soren’s residence at Shanti Niketan in Delhi and even sent a team to the airport, but failed to locate him. Sleuths were stationed there till at least 10pm on Monday and seized about ₹36 lakh in cash from his Delhi residence, a BMW SUV, and some documents. Soren later said none of this belonged to him and registered a case against ED.
The developments prompted the BJP to allege that Soren was absconding in fear. But Soren – who had landed in Delhi on Friday and was expected to fly out in a chartered plane – drove 1,300km to Ranchi overnight and showed up in the city on Tuesday.
A Kolkata based businessman, Amit Kumar Agarwal, arrested by ED on June 7 last year, is key to Soren’s arrest as he is suspected to be the handler of tainted funds of several politicians including the former Jharkhand CM, as alleged in a petition filed in the Jharkhand high court in 2021 by a lawyer, Rajeev Kumar.
ED has already filed a charge sheet in the alleged land scam on June 12, 2023, naming Amit Agarwal, arrested Indian Administrative Officer (IAS) Chhavi Ranjan and eight other individuals, Dilip Kumar Ghosh (a close aide of Agarwal), Pradip Bagchi, Afshar Ali (alleged kingpin who created fake deeds on landed properties), Mohammad Saddam Hussain, Imtiaz Ahmad, Talha Khan, Faiyaz Ahmed, Bhanu Pratap Prasad, and three companies allegedly linked to Agarwal – Jagatbandhu Tea Estates Pvt Ltd, Rajesh Auto Merchandise Pvt Ltd and Aurora Studio Pvt Ltd.
The alleged scam pertains to usurping prime landed parcels including a 4.55 acre defence land at Morabadi Mouza at Ranchi, and a land parcel of 7.6 acres at Hehal, Ranchi – both valued at over ₹74 crore at the current market price, besides several other land parcels – by the accused persons by making fake deeds using manufactured identities and falsifying original land records at Circle Offices and Registrar of Assurances (RoA), Kolkata and Circle Offices in Jharkhand, according to the ED charge sheet, which has been seen by HT.
Overall, ED has recovered documents related to at least 27 properties of which alleged fake deeds were created by the accused people.
Earlier, registration of the landed properties of Bihar (when Jharkhand was part of it) was done at Kolkata at the office of Registrar of Assurances (RoA). This continued till 1991 after which Bihar properties’ registration, including present-day Jharkhand, became mandatory at the concerned jurisdictional land registration offices.
“The accused persons manufactured back-dated deeds of the targeted landed properties from Kolkata and planted it in original registers at RoA, Kolkata. Then, they used to obtain certified copies of those deeds and then disposed of the properties in connivance with each other. They had fake stamps/seals through which they created these fake deeds,” said a second ED official.
The 4.55 acres (or decimals) land in Ranchi which was sold off by creating falsified documents belonged to defence, according to ED.