The Enforcement Directorate has arrested a top Chhattisgarh bureaucrat in connection with the state’s coal extortion case. The official has been identified as Soumya Chaurasia and she is designated as Deputy Secretary in Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel-led administration.
The special court granted the ED a 4-day custody to quiz the deputy secretary of Chhattisgarh. Sources said that the ED had sought 14-day custody. She will be presented before the court on December 6.
According to ED sources, the official has been identified as Soumya Chaurasia and is designated as Deputy Secretary in Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel-led administration.
The arrest comes days after Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Baghel issued a series of warnings to central probe agencies and alleged ‘violence and intimidation’ by the officials while discharging their duties.
He had said that complaints of ED and IT officials’ resorting to violence were reaching him and the same was “unacceptable”.
The arrested government official was under the scanner of ED in an illegal mining case after the Income Tax Department raided properties attached to her.
The source said that she was arrested after she was summoned for questioning by the ED.
She was questioned by the financial probe agency on several occasions in the last two months I’m connection with the case.
The ED conducted searches and made arrests under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) 2002, in connection with a scam wherein an illegal levy of Rs 25 per tonne was allegedly extorted for each tonne of coal that was transported in Chhattisgarh by a cartel involving senior bureaucrats, businessmen politicians and middlemen.
The ED had registered a case of money laundering on the basis of an FIR lodged by the Income Tax Department.