E-Paper
Trouble brewing for more Koda men
Three-fourths of the members of former chief minister Madhu Koda’s government in Jharkhand are facing charges of corruption.
Three-fourths of the members of former chief minister Madhu Koda’s government in Jharkhand are facing charges of corruption.
Four of them, including Koda, are in jail.
Koda was chief minister of Jharkhand from September 2006 to August 2008 and had 12 colleagues, of whom nine are facing graft charges.
The latest to be imprisoned is Kamlesh Kumar Singh, a person accused in the same disproportionate assets case as Koda.
Singh was on Tuesday remanded to 14 days’ judicial custody by Special Vigilance Judge Vinay Kant Khan. Koda was imprisoned on Monday.
The charges relate to three cases being tried at the Jharkhand High Court and the special vigilance court here.
Enos Ekka and Hari Narayan Rai, two former ministerial colleagues of Koda, are in the same jail since August 17 on similar charges of amassing assets disproportionate to their known sources of income.
This is the first instance in independent India that there have been corruption charges against a government to this extent.
Vigilance bureau sources say three more former cabinet colleagues of Koda will soon be behind bars. Bureau officials have prepared papers for seeking arrest warrants against former ministers Bandhu Tirkey, Bhanu Pratap Shahi and Nalin Soren.
Kamlesh Kumar Singh, a Nationalist Congress Party member, is facing charges of purchasing properties and land worth more than Rs 50 crore in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Ranchi in the name of his wife, Madhu Singh, and brothers.
Ekka and Rai are charged with owning assets worth Rs 3.69 crore and Rs 1.19 crore, respectively, which are beyond their known sources of income.
