A day after conducting raids at various sites in Ranchi, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) arrested Sanjiv Lal, the personal secretary of Jharkhand minister Alamgir Alam, along with the minister’s domestic help on Tuesday. Official sources confirmed the seizure of more than Rs 32 crore in cash from a flat linked to them.
The duo was arrested under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) after being questioned overnight. Notably, the two didn’t cooperate with the investigation and avoided answering the questions asked by the officials
On Monday, ED carried out raids on a two-bedroom flat in Ranchi as part of a money-laundering investigation into alleged irregularities in the state rural development department. The flat, reportedly occupied by Lal’s domestic help, Jehangir Alam, situated at Gadikhana Chowk, yielded over Rs 32 crore in cash.
Additionally, Rs 3 crore was found in other searched premises, totaling a cash recovery of Rs 35.23 crore, according to PTI sources. However, Jharkhand’s rural development minister Alam, who belongs to the Congress party, denied any wrongdoing.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while addressing poll rallies in Andhra Pradesh and Odisha on Monday, took a dig at the cash haul, saying “mounds of cash” were seized by the ED in Jharkhand, and wondered why such people are “close to the Congress’s first family.”
“They have made the worker’s house a godown of corruption. This is not the first time as a bigger seizure was made from an MP (in Jharkhand) earlier also and it was such a big cache that even machines were tired of counting,” Modi said at Vemagiri in Andhra Pradesh.
On the other hand,Congress and other opposition parties have accused the BJP-led Centre of misusing agencies like the ED to target their leaders.
The probe agency also found an official communication from May 2023 at the flat, written by the Ranchi unit of the ED to the Jharkhand chief secretary. It sought an independent probe and FIR registration into alleged bribes taken from contractors working for the state rural development department.
These alleged disclosures came from former chief engineer of the rural works department, Veerendra Kumar Ram, arrested by the ED last year. The premises also yielded recommendation letters from MLAs and other influential figures to Alam for favorable transfers and postings of state government officials.
The searches that resulted in a significant amount of cash recovery were part of an investigation into money laundering involving Ram. The ED claimed that Ram, while working as the chief engineer in the Rural Works Department in Ranchi, received commission from contractors for tender allotments .He and his family spent this money on living a luxurious life, according to the ED’s statement from April last year.
The money-laundering case against Ram stemmed from a complaint by the Jharkhand Anti-Corruption Bureau.