The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has arrested four more accused persons in connection with the money laundering into an extortion racket that targeted coal buyers and transporters in Chhattisgarh. The agency has so far attached assets worth ₹152.50 crore in the case.
The accused, identified as Deepesh Taunk, Sandeep Kumar Nayak, Shiv Shankar Nag and Rajesh Chaudhary, were produced before a special court that sent them to three-day ED custody.
While Deepesh is a close confidant of one of the main accused, Saumya Chaurasia was Deputy Secretary in the Chief Minister’s Office. Sandeep and Shiv Shankar were mining officers who assisted the syndicate of “kingpin” Suryakant Tiwari in committing extortion and acquiring the proceeds of the crime, said the agency. The fourth accused, Rajesh, is a conman who cheated people by claiming to work as a middleman to settle cases.
According to the ED, close family members of Indramani Group’s Sunil Agarwal, who was arrested by the agency in October last year, were making desperate efforts to secure his release. At that time, Rajesh got in touch with them. He had also created fake ID cards showing him as an ED official and used them in various KYC documents submitted to banks.
In October 2022, the agency had also arrested IAS official Sameer Vishnoi and Laxmikant Tiwari and Sunil Kumar Agrawal of Indramani Group. It alleged that they were part of the racket involving senior bureaucrats, businessmen, politicians and middlemen. In December, the then Deputy Secretary was also taken into custody.
The ED investigation is based on the findings of the Income-Tax Department which had conducted searches at multiple locations in June-July 2022. As alleged, the racket started after the then Geology and Mining Department Director in the State modified the online process of issuing e-permits for transporting coal from mines in July 2020, making it mandatory to get manual no-objection certificate (NOC).
More than 30,000 NOCs were issued without following any standard procedure, registers were not maintained, and there was no clarity on the role of the officials concerned. There were several other irregularities.
The ED said each coal buyer or transporter had to pay ₹25 per tonne to the syndicate to get the NOC. “It is estimated that about ₹2-3 crore was generated on a daily basis,” it had earlier alleged. The cartel is suspected to have collected over ₹500 crore in two years.
