RAJ KUMAR
Ranchi, May 4: The ED investigating laundering of money earned by illegal transfer of land in Ranchi arrested Jharkhand’s social welfare director Chhavi Ranjan after more than 10 hours of questioning at 9.55 pm on Thursday.
Sources close to the probe team said arresting has been done, just some documentation work is going on.
Ranjan has been arrested under sections of the PMLA for colluding with land mafias to grab large parcel of private and government land in Ranchi. He was confronted with a number of land records purposely doctored to change ownership and nature of land to help mafias. He will be produced in the court shortly.
The Enforcement Directorate team started questioning Jharkhand’s social welfare director Chhavi Ranjan in connection with his acts and omissions he did while dealing land cases in the capacity of Ranchi’s deputy commissioner.
This was the second time the IAS officer was being questioned by the central probe agency probing laundering of money earned through illegal dealing of army land and other plots in the Jharkhand capital. Earlier, the probe agency had questioned him on April 24 when he was availing his paternity leave.
The ED arrested him after its officials got satisfied that IAS Ranjan had a role in the purchase and sale of land owned by the army. It also wants to ensure the genuineness of allegations leveled against him by Bargain circle officer Manoj Kumar telling that he had doubt on the documents submitted by Pradeep Bagchi to the circle office but following heavy pressure from IAS Ranjan and threat of punishment he sent favouring fraud and thus paved the path for illegal land deal.
With arresting of Ranjan the number of people arrested in this connection rose to eight. Earlier, the probe agency had arrested seven persons in the case. The allegations of forgery by tampering the original documents of the land, holding numbers on fake documents, etc. had already been confirmed and the probe agency dug more information after interrogating Ranjan.
