ED attaches assets worth Rs 152 crore of IAS officers, others in Chhattisgarh illegal mining case

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) attached assets worth Rs 152 crore of IAS officers and others in the Chhattisgarh illegal mining case on Saturday.

ED has so far recorded statements of around 100 individuals in the case.

By Munish Chandra Pandey: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has attached movable and immovable properties worth Rs 152.31 crore including the assets of few IAS officials in connection with the Chhattisgarh illegal mining case. The attached assets include 65 properties belonging to Suryakant Tiwari, 21 properties of Saumya Chaurasia (Deputy Secretary to Chhattisgarh CM), five properties of IAS officer Sameer Vishnoi IAS, Sunil Agarwal and others. The properties include cash, jewellery, flats, coal washers and plots in Chhattisgarh.

The attached plots include agriculture lands measuring 63.38 acre in Hirri, Potiya and Sevati, Durg, 10 acre land in Rasni and Arang, Raipur, commercial land measuring 12 acre in Thakuraintola, Durg and a farm house.

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The ED conducted searches at more than 75 locations including the mining departments of Korba and Raighad and collected incriminating evidence.

ED has so far recorded statements of around 100 individuals. “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 (no objection certificate) with state mining officers,” said the probe agency.

Armed with this government order, the alleged extortion at the rate of Rs 25 per tonne of transported coal, started in right earnest. Suryakant Tiwari was allegedly the main henchman at the ground level who deployed his employees in various regions to extort money from Coal Transporters & Industrialists and his team was physically coordinating with lower level government functionaries and coal transporters & representatives of user companies.

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“Since his employees were spread across the state, they maintained WhatsApp groups, excel sheets of each Coal Delivery Order & the extorted amounts and shared them with Suryakant Tiwari, who in turn maintained detailed hand written Diaries of the incoming bribe amounts & their utilisation for purchase of benami lands, payment of bribes, payments for political expenditure etc. This kind of systemic extortion was not possible without the knowledge & active participation of the state machinery,” added the probe agency.

According to officials, the fact that it ran uninterrupted without a single FIR and collected around Rs 500 crore in two years, clearly indicates that all the accused persons were acting in a concerted manner at the instructions of person(s) at the highest level, having command & control over the state machinery. ED is investigating the entire gamut of transactions in relation to the extortion racket.

ED has alleged that an amount of at least Rs 540 crore has been extorted in the last 2 years. ED has analysed thousands of hand written diary entries. Officials claim that ED has not merely relied on the diary entries, but has done detailed investigation including bank account analysis, analysis of seized WhatsApp chats, recording of the statements to corroborate the diary entries.

Earlier, in this case, ED had arrested IAS officer Sameer Vishnoi, Sunil Agarwal, Laxmikant Tiwari and another IAS officer Saumya Chaurasia in this case.