How politicians, bureaucrats pulled off ‘Great Liquor Loot’ of Chhattisgarh

Raipur: Chhattisgarh’s liquor trade has exploded into one of India’s biggest scams. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has arrested Chaitanya Baghel, son of former Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel, blowing the lid off a massive scandal that’s shaking the state.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Friday arrested Baghel in an alleged liquor scam-linked money laundering case.

The probe agency claimed that he received Rs 16.70 crore in the scam and played a key role in handling

more than Rs 1,000 crore that constituted the proceeds of crime.

The ED has alleged that the entire liquor trade in the state, between 2019 and 2023, was nothing short of a state-run extortion racket, masked by policy and powered by political muscle.

And at the heart of it, ED claims, was the then CM’s son -- pulling strings not only to divert black money into real estate but to build an empire of cash-fuelled influence.

What makes the scam even more sinister is the ED’s explosive assertion that the liquor syndicate -- consisting of Anwar Dhebar, Anil Tuteja, and Arun Pati Tripathi -- was allegedly working under the aegis of retired Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer Vivek Dhand, a former Chief Secretary of the state.

The arrest of Chaitanya Baghel, ED says, is no routine development. His real estate project, Vitthal Green, was allegedly the laundromat through which illicit liquor cash was turned into clean capital. On the surface, it was a housing complex. Behind the scenes, it was - in the ED’s own words - “a construction site for corruption.”