ED summons Jharkhand CM for third time in money laundering case

by IANS |

New Delhi, Sep 1 (IANS) The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has sent fresh summons to Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren to join the probe in a Prevention of Money Laundering case related to a land grabbing incident on September 9.

This is the third summon issued to Soren. Last time, Soren was questioned in connection with the illegal mining case for around ten hours along with his wife at ED's Ranchi based office.

In the present case, the ED has arrested 13 persons, including an IAS officer.

On July 8, a raid was conducted at the residence of Chief Minister's legislator representative Pankaj Mishra. The ED found a checkbook linked to Chief Minister Hemant Soren's bank account. Following this, their name was connected to this case. Mishra was then placed under arrest. Now, the ED has summoned them for questioning on August 14.

The agency seized a large number of fake deeds from their possession. In this case, there were allegations against IAS officer Chhavi Ranjan, and as a result, the ED conducted a raid on her and later arrested her. This case is from Jharkhand, but its ramifications extend to Bihar and Kolkata.

The sources said that the accused used to occupy land by referring to pre-independence documents and creating fake documents from 1932. They claimed to have owned the land since the time when the entire region was West Bengal, including parts of Bihar and Jharkhand, encompassing both private and government lands.

When the ED conducted a forensic examination of the seized documents, it was revealed that all the documents were forged. The districts' names that did not exist before independence were mentioned along with pre-independence documents, and the PIN code from the 1970s was used in old documents. After uncovering these small discrepancies, the accused were arrested.