Enforcement Directorate (ED) officials conducted raids at multiple locations in Chhattisgarh on Friday. As indicated by sources, raids were directed at the premises of senior IAS officials Anbalagan P, Vipul Patel, and Swatantra Jain. ED authorities attacked the premises of previous MLA Agni Chandrakar. Jain is the father-in-law of Suryakant Tiwari who is on the radar of the supposed coal scam. ED authorities led a look at the Mahasamund and Raipur homes of Jain.
In December 2022, ED temporarily appended versatile and 91 ardent properties worth Rs 152.31 Crore having a place with captured officials including Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel Deputy Secretary Saumya Chaurasia, IAS Sameer Vishnoi, Suryakant Tiwari among others.
Out of the properties raided by ED, 65 are owned by Suryakant Tiwari, 21 are owned by Saumya Chaurasia, and five are owned by IAS Sameer Bishnoi. The joined properties incorporate money, adornments, flats, coal washeries, and plots of land situated in Chhattisgarh.
ED examination uncovered that as a component of a terrific trick, strategy changes were made and Director Mining gave an Administration Request on 15 July 2020, to change a current productive web-based arrangement of the issuance of transport licenses, to present a manual layer where Coal clients had to apply for NOC with State Mining officials.
Outfitted with this administration request, the coercion at the pace of Rs 25 for every huge amount of shipped Coal, began in right earnest. Suryakant Tiwari was the fundamental cohort at the ground level who conveyed his workers in different areas to blackmail cash from Coal carriers and industrialists and his group was genuinely organizing with lower-level government functionaries and Coal carriers and agents of client organizations.
Since his workers were spread across the State, they kept up with WhatsApp groups, succeed sheets of each Coal Conveyance Request, and the blackmailed sums and imparted them to Suryakant Tiwari, who thusly kept up with itemized manually written journals of the approaching pay-off sums and their use for the acquisition of Benami lands, installment of pay-offs, installments for political consumption and so on.
ED examination has uncovered that a measure of essentially Rs 540 Crore has been coerced over the most recent 2 years. Prior, to this situation, ED had captured Sameer Vishnoi IAS, Sunil Agarwal, and Laxmikant Tiwari in October 2022. On 2 December 2022, ED captured Saumya Chaurasia. On 9 December 2022, ED documented an indictment protest against Suryakant Tiwari, Sameer Bishnoi IAS, Laxmikant Tiwari, Sunil Agarwal, and others under the custody of the PMLA Special Court Raipur. Ms. Saumya Chaurasia is under the custody of ED.