New Delhi, (Samajweekly) The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has summoned Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren to join the probe in connection with a money laundering case.
A source said on Tuesday that Soren he has been asked to appear before ED on August 14.
Though the ED has not made any official statement in this connection, the source in the know of things said that it could be related to a land grabbing matter.
Earlier late last year, Soren was questioned in connection with an illegal mining case.
He was questioned for around 10 hours along with his wife at the ED’s Ranchi office.
In the land grabbing case, the ED has arrested 13 persons including an IAS officer.
On July 8, a raid was conducted at the residence of Chief Minister’s legislator representative Pankaj Mishra. The ED found a cheque book linked to Chief Minister Hemant Soren’s bank account. Subsequently, his name was connected to this case.
Mishra has been placed under arrest.
According to the source, the arrested accused used documents from 1932 to wrongfully seize people’s lands by telling them that their lands had already been sold by their fathers or grandfathers.
They deceitfully took possession of the lands given on lease to the army and also fraudulently sold them elsewhere.
The agency seized a large number of fake deeds from their possession.
The ED had also conducted a raid on premises linked to IAS officer Chhavi Ranjan and later arrested her.
The case is from Jharkhand, but its ramifications extend to Bihar and Kolkata.
The source said that the accused used to occupy land by referring to pre-independence documents and creating fake documents from 1932. They claimed to have owned the land since the time when the entire region was West Bengal, including parts of Bihar and Jharkhand, encompassing both private and government lands.
When the ED conducted a forensic examination of the seized documents, it was revealed that all the documents were forged. The districts’ names that did not exist before independence were mentioned along with pre-independence documents, and the PIN code from the 1970s was used in old documents. After uncovering these small discrepancies, the accused were arrested.
