RAJ KUMAR
Ranchi, April 28: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has summoned Jharkhand Social Welfare Director Chhavi Ranjan again on May 4.
Apart from him, the central probe agency, has also summoned Kolkata’s additional registrar of assurance Trideep Mishra on May 2 and five others on May 3.
The five others include Shyam Singh Bhatia from Jamshedpur besides Shekhar Kushwaha, Priyaranjan Sahay and Vipin Singh from Ranchi. Bhatia is supposedly close to social welfare director Ranjan. All have been called to the ED’s Ranchi office.
The case in which all have been summoned is related to laundering of money earned by illegal sale and purchase of army land and other plots in Ranchi.
The development took place a day after the ED raided the premises of Ravi Singh Bhatia and Shyam Singh Bhatia in Jamshedpur and locations of Shekhar Kushwaha, Priyaranjan Sahay and Vipin Kumar Singh in Ranchi on the same day. During this raid, the ED recovered many documents related to the land deal. Apart from this, the ED also froze 50 bank accounts.
According to the information, about 22 people from many areas of the city had made a written complaint to the ED about the sale of land in a fraudulent manner during the interrogation in the Army Land Scam. Then the ED took the complaints seriously and investigated. In this sequence the ED took action from Wednesday morning.
The ED has been probing the case since April 13. It raided a total of 21 locations of 18 people involved in land business, including IAS officer Chhavi Ranjan, Circle officer Manoj Kumar. The raids included 18 locations in Jharkhand, one in Bihar and two in West Bengal.
The ED has arrested seven people and interrogated them in connection with the Army land scam.