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The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Thursday arrested three advocates in connection with a money laundering case related to the Patna Railway Claims Tribunal scam, the agency said.
The arrests followed search operations conducted on January 22 at four locations linked to Judge RK Mittal and other involved advocates in Patna, Nalanda, and Mangalore. According to the ED, the arrested advocates--Bidyanand Singh, Parmanand Sinha, and Vijay Kumar--are accused of money laundering in connection with the scam under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002. The accused were produced before a special PMLA court, where they were sent to judicial custody. The ED initiated the investigation based on First Information Reports (FIRs) filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) regarding widespread irregularities and criminal activities in death claim cases filed, processed, and decided at the Railway Claims Tribunal, Patna (RCT). The cases were filed against unknown public servants of the Railway, along with Bidyanand Singh, Parmanand Sinha, Vijay Kumar, and others under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), 1860, and the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. According to the FIRs, in the case of accidental death claims, only a portion of the decreed amount, actually awarded to the claimants, was received by the claimants, while a major chunk was siphoned off by the conspirators. The ED's investigation revealed that advocate Bidyanand Singh and his team of advocates, including Parmanand Sinha and Vijay Kumar, dealt with around 900 cases in which decrees and execution orders were issued by Judge RK Mittal. In these cases, approximately Rs 50 crore in compensation was awarded to the claimants. The investigation further revealed that advocate Bidyanand Singh and his team opened and operated bank accounts in the names of the claimants without their knowledge. Using the claimants' signatures and thumb impressions, they transferred the claim amounts received from the railways into their own accounts or withdrew the funds in cash. Subsequently, they disbursed only a portion of the compensation to the claimants, as per their discretion. The searches conducted led to the identification of assets acquired by the advocates and the judge in their names. Physical and digital records, including signed blank bank cheques and signed blank papers from the claimants, were also recovered, the agency added. (ANI)
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