THE Enforcement Directorate (ED) arrested Jharkhand Minister Alamgir Alam’s personal secretary Sanjiv Lal and the latter’s domestic help on Tuesday, following the recovery of more than Rs 32 crore in cash from a flat linked to them, official sources said. The agency also undertook fresh searches at five locations in the State and seized another Rs 1.5 crore in cash from a contractor identified as Rajiv Kumar. The total cash recovery over the last two days stands at Rs 36.75 crore, the sources said. Lal and his domestic help, Jehangir Alam, were taken into custody under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) following their overnight questioning, they added.

 

The sources said the two did not cooperate in the investigation and were “evasive” to the questions asked by the ED officials. As part of a money-laundering investigation into alleged irregularities in the State Rural Development Department, the ED on Monday raided a two-bedroom flat in Ranchi that was allegedly occupied by Jehangir Alam. A sports utility vehicle (SUV) with a Jharkhand registration number that was allegedly being used by Jehangir Alam has also been seized by the ED. The agency unearthed more than Rs 32 crore in cash from the flat located at the Gadikhana chowk, apart from Rs 3 crore from some other premises that were searched on Monday. Jharkhand Rural Development Minister Alamgir Alam (of the Congress) has denied any wrongdoing on his part. Prime Minister Narendra Modi mentioned the cash haul at his poll rallies in Andhra Pradesh and Odisha on Monday, saying “mounds of cash” were seized by the ED in Jharkhand, and wondered why such people are “close to the Congress’s first family”.

 

“They have made the worker’s house a godown of corruption. This is not the first time as a bigger seizure was made from an MP (in Jharkhand) earlier also and it was such a big cache that even machines were tired of counting,” Modi said at Vemagiri in Andhra Pradesh. The federal agency also seized from the flat an official communication from May 2023 written by the ED’s Ranchi unit to the Jharkhand Chief Secretary seeking an independent probe and the registration of an FIR into the “revelations” of alleged bribes taken from contractors who worked for the State Rural Development Department. Jharkhand Minister’s secretary collected commission for ‘influential people’, says ED: JHARKHAND Minister Alamgir Alam’s secretary collected commission on tenders on behalf of “some influential people”, the Enforcement Directorate told a court here on Tuesday, also claiming that officials of his rural development department, from “top to bottom”, were involved in an alleged illegal cash payment nexus.