Jharkhand IAS officer and husband had huge cash in accounts, transferred to CA, says ED

Ranchi: Jharkhand mining secretary Pooja Singhal and her husband received "huge" cash deposits -- to the tune of Rs 1.43 crore -- over and above her salary in their accounts, during the period she faced charges of irregularities while being posted as the DM of various districts in the state, the ED has said.

The federal agency also told a special PMLA court in Ranchi that the IAS officer allegedly transferred Rs 16.57 lakh from her "personal account" to those controlled or owned by her CA Suman Kumar.

Kumar was arrested on Saturday for alleged money laundering in a case linked to alleged fraud of MGNREGA money.

The 39-year-old was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate from Ranchi after the agency conducted multi-city raids against him, Singhal, her businessman husband Abhishek Jha and others, on May 6.

The special court sent him to ED custody till May 11.

The ED said it has seized over Rs 17.79 crore in cash from the residential and office premises of the chartered accountant.

Officials had deployed machines to count the cash haul and photos and videos of this exercise was widely shared over social media.

The overall cash seizure after these raids, as per the agency, stands at Rs 19.31 crore with seizure also being made from another location in Ranchi.

Seeking Kumar's custody, the agency in its remand note said, the CA was "withholding" information regarding the source of the cash seized from his house and was not disclosing the "actual owner" of the cash.

The agency alleged in the court document that Singhal, an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of the 2000 batch, used funds that were deposited in "cash" in her banks accounts while she served as DC of three districts during 2007-2013, to purchase life insurance policies.

The ED investigation pertains to a money laundering case in which former junior engineer in the Jharkhand government, Ram Binod Prasad Sinha, was arrested by the agency on June 17, 2020 from West Bengal after he was booked by the agency under the PMLA in 2012 after studying the FIRs of the state vigilance bureau against him.

Sinha was booked by the vigilance bureau under criminal sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) pertaining to cheating and corruption for allegedly defrauding public money and investing it in his own name as well as in the name of his family members while working as junior engineer from April 1, 2008 to March 21, 2011.