ED cracks down, seizes cash as several officials targeted

RANCHI: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) On Tuesday conducted widespread raids at over half-a-dozen places as it targeted three Circle Officers (CO), one District Transport Officer (DTO), a lawyer, a land dealer and a few others in its ongoing probe into a land scam probe.

The raids have been conducted across multiple locations, including the residences of DTO Dhanbad and a CO, Ranchi. In addition, other suspects who were accused of extorting and fraudulent land deals were also targeted.

According to the ED sources, these operations are a follow-up of an FIR filed at the Pandra police station in Ranchi. The case is related to suspicious financial transactions relating to efforts made to influence an investigation about a land scam. Quoting sources, they have reportedly recovered a significant amount of money from DTO Diwakar Prasad Dwivedi’s residence at Dev Vihar Apartment in Dhanbad itself during the raids.

The residences of another four people from Ranchi, namely, Jai Kumar Ram, Prabhat Bhushan, Sanjeev Pandey and Ravi, also received notice. The Dhanbad DTO is alongside Kanke and Namkum COs of Ranchi and is held to have conceptualised a Rs 5.71 crore deal. The deal was apparently to keep them out of any official chargesheet that may be filed in connection with the land scam after influencing the ED investigation.

Earlier this month, the case took a twist when a land broker named Sanjeev Kumar Pandey complained with the Pandra Police in Ranchi, accusing lawyer Sujit Kumar of cheating him of Rs 12 lakh on the promise that his and his associate’s names would be dropped from the chargesheet by the ED. Even this payment, he claims, did not deter Kumar from including his name in the chargesheet, and so, he wrote a cheque for the return of his money. Kumar then handed over 54 cheques to him and gave his car as collateral and signed an agreement on both the cheques.