Probe against coal stained DIG okayed

Singh had earlier been suspended by Chief Minister Babulal Marandi after Income Tax sleuths charged him with concealment of assets to the tune of Rs 1.5 crore last month.

A notification brought out by the state Home Department last evening conveyed its consent to the CBI to proceed against Singh.

A Bihar Police Service officer of 1971 batch, Singh was posted at Hazaribagh as DIG during 1998-2000.

Early this year, I-T sleuths, on a tip-off, raided the Dhandbad and Giridh-based residences of one Manager Singh, who was facing cases under various sections of the IPC, including forgery, fabricating false documents and theft of coal.

In these raids, the I-T officials reportedly recovered a diary showing Manager Singh paid bribes on a regular basis to a number of police officials, including DIG Singh, to facilitate the illegal sale and purchase of coal.

On the basis of the diary, simultaneous raids were conducted on the premises of DIG Singh, Inspector Lallan Singh and two coal suppliers, Sambhu Singh and Nirmal Jain, on March 9.

Income-Tax Commissioner Jagdish Jha told The Indian Express that these raids resulted in seizure of two diaries from Sambhu Singh’s house, indicating Rs 3 lakh had been paid to half a dozen police officers.

In the raid on DIG Singh’s premises in Ranchi and Hazaribagh in Jharkhand and Patna and Chapra in Bihar, I-T officials reportedly recovered undisclosed cash of Rs 2.40 lakh.

Also, ‘‘incriminating documents’’ pointing to sale and purchase of four flats in Andheri (Mumbai) in the name of Santosh Sumar Sharma and an account in the name of Sonu Exports with the Mumbai-based Bank of America, carrying Rs 24 lakh.

On April 16, Manager Singh was arrested by the police and remanded to judicial custody in Giridih.

The late coal mafia don Surya Deo Singh’s son Rajiv Ranjan Singh’s property was also attached in Dhanbad and Pradeep Beltharia, owner of Chinnamastika Coal Transport Company, was booked in Hazaribagh on April 17.

Along with Manager Singh, the two are widely known as ‘‘coal mafia dons’’ doing illegal mining and trafficking of coal with forged road permits. But both Rajiv, declared a fugitive, and Beltharia are still at large.