IN THE din and dust of charges and counter-charges, it is not possible for anyone to make a definitive statement if Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Mr. Bhupesh Baghel really accepted or not a massive bribe of Rs. 508 crores as alleged in an official press release by the Enforcement Directorate (ED). The ED has stated without any ambiguity that the promoters of the illegal Mahadev On-Line Gambling App paid that much money so far to the Chief Minister of the poll-bound Chhattisgarh. As expected, Mr. Baghel has stoutly refuted the charges and alleged a political conspiracy to frame him and his Congress party ahead of legislative elections in the State. However, we feel strongly that this entire episode must be raised above political charges and counter-charges and investigated into completely until the whole truth is out and the guilty are pin-pointed and finally punished.

 

That is the only way out of such a disgusting situation. Enough pointers are available in the case the Enforcement Directorate has built to suggest that the trail of corruption in different forms travels back to a time nearly two years ago -- not just in Chhattisgarh but also in Andhra Pradesh. The cops had registered a case way back in June 2023 in Andhra Pradesh and another case was also registered at a Police Station in Chhattisgarh in February 2022. Both those cases had strikingly similar elements. Against this background, how correct is Mr. Bhupesh Baghel’s allegation that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was plotting a conspiracy to frame him? For, in both places -- that is Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, the State Government does not belong to the BJP. Then, does Mr. Baghel want suggest that his own State was plotting against him? These details cannot be brushed aside easily.

 

The entire episode, thus, requires a deeper investigation so that the actual story comes out. For, enough reasons are available to suspect that a lot of illegal money changed hands through Hawala operations even from international domain-handlers. The ED has also made some arrests in this regard, pointing to possibilities of high-level corruption. The ED’s statement of November 3, 2023, bears the marks of what the arrested persons have revealed to the interrogators. The written statement by one money-operative Shubham Soni suggests that money was used as a bribe to buy ‘protection’ from Chhattisgarh Police.

 

There is another person -- Chandrabhushan Verma, a possible channel of operations -- who have made similar revelations to the investigators. Most of the details, thus, are damning, to say the least, and Mr. Bhupesh Baghel will have to do a lot of answering if he wants to stay clear of all allegations. Hence our insistence of deeper investigation into the whole episode. It is not enough for the Chief Minister to allege political conspiracy based on total falsehood. He will have to make himself available for deeper investigation into the scandalous transfer of money from an illegal on-line betting operator. We will be extremely happy if he emerges fully exonerated from the investigations. But what is involved in this episode is not just a few hundred crores of rupees but political morality whose sacrifice the nation can only ill-afford. The sums of money allegedly involved in this affair are no doubt huge. But more serious is the loss of political morality -- which is of a greater concern to all.