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The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Thursday (May 4) arrested Jharkhand cadre 2011-batch IAS officer Chhavi Ranjan for his role in allegedly illegal land deals.
Ranjan, who was currently serving as the Director of Social Welfare, is the second second Jharkhand-cadre IAS officer arrested by ED within a year. On May 11 last year, the 2000-batch IAS officer Pooja Singhal was arrested in the MGNREGA scam in Kunti district of Jharkhand while she was posted as the Deputy Commissioner of Khunti in the year 2008-09.
Before his arrest Ranjan was questioned twice by the ED on April 13 and April 24. He is accused of illegal purchase and sale of land owned by the Indian Army in Ranchi during his posting as Deputy Commissioner there, said sources.
ED’s investigation is based on an FIR being registered in Ranchi, against a syndicate which forged certain documents to fake the ownership of 4.5 acres of defence land in Ranchi. The syndicate made a fraudulent sale of the same land to a West Bengal-based company.
The investigation is also revolving around a one-acre land in Cheshire Home road in the Bariatu area of Ranchi. ED is looking at the money laundering in the sale of land parcels, including the two mentioned.
Before Ranjan’s arrest, the agency had arrested seven people, namely: Pradeep Bagchi, Md Saddam Hussain, Afshar Ali, Imtiaz Ahmed, Talha Khan, Bhanu Pratap Prasad and Faiyaz Khanangle. Bhanu Partap Prasad and Afshar Ali are Jharkhand government employees, while Afshar Ali is an employee at a government hospital. Before his arrest, Bhanu Pratap Prasad was posted as revenue sub-inspector with the Bargain circle office in Ranchi.
The remaining people are believed to be middlemen who were dealing with the sale and purchase of land. The ED claims they were involved in ‘forging and tempering’ various documents and records, in a bid to make the fraudulent sale. Chhavi Ranjan was the Deputy Commissioner of Ranchi between July 15, 2020 to July 11, 2022 when the land deals allegedly happened and ED claims that Ranjan played a part in the entire scam.
ED sources said that the defence land originally belonged to one BM Laxman Rao, who had handed it over to the Army after independence. The syndicate forged the document and one Pradeep Bagchi, one of the persons arrested, was made as the fake owner. The land was then sold to a West Bengal-based company Jagatbandhu Tea Estate Pvt Limited.
ED sources said that even when the circle rate of the said land stood at Rs 20.75 crore, it was sold at a highly undervalued price of Rs 7 crore, out of which Rs 25 lakh was paid to Bagchi and the rest of the amount was ‘falsely shown as paid’ through cheques in the name of the Tea Estate in 2021, which was not the case. This was to show that the transaction and payments relating to the sale purchase of the land was genuine.
