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Enforcement Directorate (ED) officials conducted raids at multiple locations in Chhattisgarh on Friday.
According to sources, raids were conducted at the premises of senior IAS officers Anbalagan P, Vipul Patel and Swatantra Jain. ED officials also raided the premises of former MLA Agni Chandrakar. Jain is the father in Law of Suryakant Tiwari who is on the radar of the alleged coal scam. ED officials conducted searches at Mahasamund and Raipur residences of Jain. In December last, ED provisionally attached movable and 91 immovable properties worth Rs 152.31 Crore belonging to arrested bureaucrats including Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel's Deputy Secretary Saumya Chaurasia, IAS Sameer Vishnoi, Suryakant Tiwari among others. Out of the properties attached by ED, 65 belong to Suryakant Tiwari, 21 belong to Saumya Chaurasia and five belong to IAS Sameer Bishnoi. The attached properties include cash, jewellery, flats, coal washeries and plots of land located in Chhattisgarh. ED investigation revealed that as part of a grand conspiracy, policy changes were made and Director Mining issued a Government Order on July 15, 2020, to modify an existing efficient online system of issuance of transport permits, to introduce a manual layer where Coal users were forced to apply for NOC with State Mining officers. Armed with this government order, the extortion at the rate of Rs 25 per tonne of transported Coal, started in right earnest. Suryakant Tiwari was the main henchman at the ground level who deployed his employees in various regions to extort money from Coal transporters and industrialists and his team was physically coordinating with lower-level government functionaries and Coal transporters and representatives of user companies. Since his employees were spread across the State, they maintained WhatsApp groups, excel sheets of each Coal Delivery Order and the extorted amounts and shared them with Suryakant Tiwari, who in turn maintained detailed handwritten diaries of the incoming bribe amounts and their utilization for purchase of Benami lands, payment of bribes, payments for political expenditure etc. ED investigation has revealed that an amount of at least Rs 540 Crore has been extorted in the last 2 years. Earlier, in this case, ED had arrested Sameer Vishnoi IAS, Sunil Agarwal and Laxmikant Tiwari in October 2022. In December 2, 2022, ED arrested Saumya Chaurasia. On December 9, 2022, ED filed a prosecution complaint against Suryakant Tiwari, Sameer Vishnoi IAS, Laxmikant Tiwari, Sunil Agarwal and others before the PMLA Special Court Raipur. Ms Saumya Chaurasia is presently in the custody of ED. (ANI)
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