LAGATAR24 NETWORK
Ranchi, June 20: Trouble is brewing for Superintendent of Birsa Munda Central Jail Hamid Akhtar as the Enforcement Directorate (ED) is set to issue a fresh summons to him.
The ED has accused him of extending undue favour to many powerful accused of the money laundering lodged at the jail, including IAS officers Pooja Singhal and Chhavi Ranjan, power broker Prem Prakash, Kolkata-based businessman Amit Agrawal, CM Hemant Soren’s MLA representative Pankaj Mishra and others.
The ED decided to summon Hamid Akhtar in the wake of the fresh revelation that a meeting of Chhavi Ranjan and Prem Prakash was arranged in the jail. Prem Prakash met Chhavi Ranjan inside the jail beyond the prescribed hours. The ED discovered this during a surprised inspection of the jail the day ED arrested Chhavi Ranjan in the army land scam case.
The ED in the chargesheet against Chhavi Ranjan, Amit Agarwal and others have mentioned the jail meeting of Chhavi Ranjan and Prem Prakash.
“The two accused are illegally meeting inside a high security jail clearly reflects that conspiracy is still going on. This meeting was felicitated by the jail authority. This shows that the concerned jail authority is assisting in money laundering,” well-placed sources said.
Hamid Akhtar has long been in the thick of controversy as far money laundering cases are concerned. In the past, on a couple of occasions he had refused to appear before the ED whenever summoned. He refused to hand over jail CCTV footages to the ED and fought a court battle to deny any access to the ED. The CCTV footages were also destroyed.
Notably, the ED is investigating some big-ticket corruption cases namely mining scam, tender scam, MNREGA scam, army land scam and others in Jharkhand.
