ED raids IAS officer, others in Jharkhand liquor ‘scam’

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Tuesday, 29 October, raided premises linked to IAS officer Vinay Kumar Choubey, some other government officers and a number of liquor businessmen and middlemen in Jharkhand, which is poll-bound, and Chhattisgarh as part of a money laundering investigation into an alleged excise "scam".

Officials said the searches are being undertaken at 15 premises in Ranchi and Raipur after a criminal case was recently registered by the Jharkhand office of the federal probe agency under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

Teams of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF ) provided security to the ED teams.

The ED took cognisance of a 7 September FIR filed by the Chhattisgarh police anti-corruption bureau (ACB) at Raipur naming Choubey, retired Chhattisgarh IAS officer Anil Tuteja, Anwar Dhebar, the elder brother of Raipur Mayor Aijaz Dhebar, Arunpati Tripathi, an Indian Telecom Service (ITS) officer and special secretary of the Chhattisgarh excise department, and four others.

The premises of 1999-batch Jharkhand cadre IAS officer Choubey, currently the secretary of Jharkhand Panchayati Raj department, joint secretary of excise department of the state Gajendra Singh, liquor traders and linked persons are being searched, they said.

Choubey was the principal secretary to Jharkhand chief minister Hemant Soren and the excise secretary of the state during the implementation of the 2022 excise policy in Jharkhand.

The police FIR alleges that the Jharkhand liquor policy of 2022 was framed to illegally benefit liquor syndicates of the state leading to loss to the Jharkhand government.

It claimed that officials of Chhattisgarh assisted in framing a similar policy in Jharkhand as they had created in their state to earn "illegal" money from the sale of liquor.

The FIR claimed the illegal liquor trade in Jharkhand ran under the "protection" of Choubey and Gajendra Singh.

The ED arrested Tuteja, Dhebar, Tripathi and some others in the Chhattisgarh liquor "scam" linked money laundering case.

Jharkhand is currently in the midst of an Assembly election campaign, with voting scheduled in two phases on 13 and 20 November.