RAIPUR: A special court in Raipur has remanded IAS officer Sameer Vishnoi and two others arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Thursday till October 21. The central agency carried out the raids in different districts of the state since Tuesday.
The ED produced a 2009-batch IAS officer Vishnoi and two businessmen Sunil Agrawal, Laxmikant Tiwari before the special court of additional sessions judge Ajay Singh Rajpur and sought their custody.
The three accused have been arrested under the criminal sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act and taken to the court after their medical check-up.
“The court has sent all three men to the judicial custody of ED till October 21 with the mandate that the interrogation by the agency will be carried out in the presence of their respective lawyers,” said S K Farhan, the counsel of Vishnoi. Vishnoi had alleged that he had been falsely implicated by the federal agency in the case fabricated against him. The ED claimed to have recovered 4 kg gold, 20 carat diamond and `47 lakh cash from the residence of Vishnoi.
Opposing the ED’s argument and remand plea, the lawyers appearing for the three had questioned the ground of arrest calling it as “false action”. The ED had conducted extensive searches at multiple locations of senior government officials, including the deputy secretary in CM officer, businessmen and leaders of the ruling party.
The bureaucrats whose residential premises were searched included Raigarh collector Ranu Sahu, her husband JP Maurya who is director of Mineral Resources and Mining and Sameer Vishnoi CEO Chhattisgarh Infotech Promotion Society and Saumya Chaurasia deputy secretary to the CM.
Bengal teacher job scam probe widened
Kolkata: The Enforcement Directorate is widening its probe into the primary school teachers’ recruitment scam to include 58,000 such appointments in the decade-long tenure of the arrested TMC MLA Manik Bhattacharya. He was the chairperson of the West Bengal Board of Primary Education. ED sources said Bhattacharya was the key person in making these appointments allegedly in exchange for money. The Central agency came across several answer sheets where candidates did not answer any question but were appointed teachers, depriving the qualified applicants. While searching Bhattacharya’s residence recently, ED sleuths found a letter addressed to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee mentioning the alleged recruitment scam. ENS