Court extends Chaurasia’s ED custody by 4 days

 

 

 

A special court on Tuesday extended custody of Saumya Chaurasia, Deputy Secretary to Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel, to Enforcement Directorate (ED) by four days in connection with multi-crore coal levy scam being probed by the federal agency.

The same court also extended four days Judicial Custody Remand (JCR) of four other individuals, including the scam’s kingpin Suryakant Tiwari alias SKT, his uncle Laxmikant Tiwari, industrialist Sunil Agrawal and suspended IAS officer Sameer Vishnoi. Now, all the five persons would be produced before the court again on December 10.

Earlier, all the five persons were brought to the court of Ajay Singh Rajput, 4th Additional Sessions Judge (Special Judge, PMLA) on Tuesday noon at different time intervals. Firstly, Saumya Chaurasia was produced at around 3.30 pm and then 15 minutes later, the remaining four Suryakant Tiwari, Laxmikant Tiwari, industrialist Sunil Agrawal and suspended IAS officer Sameer Vishnoi entered the court room amid tight security escort of armed Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) troopers.

“Saumya Chaurasia because of her position in the State Chief Minister’s Office, enjoyed power and influence, which was far higher than her administrative experience and rank. Suryakant Tiwari was acting as the eyes and ears of Saumya Chaurasia. To safeguard herself, she was using Suryakant Tiwari as a layer in the middle to receive inputs and issue instructions to District level officers. Thus, the real power/influence, which allowed Suryakant Tiwari to run this extortion syndicate, was the undue & over-arching influence of Saumya Chaurasia. Suryakant Tiwari was able to pressurize various Officers to do illegal acts by using Saumya Chaurasia’s name. Postings of IAS/IPS officers were managed and in turn the officers were bound to assist him in all and sundry actions of Suryakant Tiwari. Suryakant Tiwari collected around Rs 500 crore through extortion and active participation of his associates like Rajnikant Tiwari, Roshan Singh, Nikhil Chandrakar, Shekh Moinudeen Qureshi, etc. The money so collected was being used by Suryakant Tiwari, Saumya Chaurasia, other senior government functionaries, to make party/election related expenditure by MLAs, to purchase benami assets, und layered into creating asscts to ultimately claim them as untainted asscts. Investigation also revealed that the large part of such money has been routed through the channelled and layered transactions in order to project it as untainted money and brought into the main stream by investing the same to acquire the properties & Coal washries etc,” the ED’s counsel informed the court in a written submission pleading to extend the custody of Saumya Chaurasia.

As the ED’s written plea, a copy of which has been accessed by this newspaper reporter, it affirms that Suryakant Tiwari was the main actor on the ground, but real planning of this conspiracy and beneficial ownership of the proceeds of crime lay with higher powers. Suryakant Tiwari is suspected to have collected cash amounts, used part of it for him, used part of them for layering in benami assets for other functionaries like Saumya Chaurasia, and based on instructions used large parts for political work and placed the rest for the use of the hidden accused persons. “Saumya Chaurasia is the vital link which will help to uncover the complete conspiracy and identify all the beneficiaries of this loot,” the plea maintained. The ED counsel also elaborated that the federal agency investigation has established that Saumya Chaurasia has ‘directly and indirectly’ received large amounts of money illegally collected by Suryakant Tiwari and she used the same the same to acquire benami properties in the name of her family members. Investigation so far reveals that she has bought properties in the name of her family members by infusing this illegally earned cash from Coal levy extortion. As per the fund trail investigation done by ED-based on the statements recorded under PMLA and examination of the seized hand written diaries by I-T Department and their independent corroboration, it is found that large amounts of cash was given to Saumya Chaurasia through her associate Manish Uppadhaya to do land deals. As mentioned above, the evidences collected so far indicates that more than Rs. 7.5 Crore has flown out of the proceeds of crime generated by the coal syndicate for the land dealings of Saumya’s family, the counsel maintained in its humble submission to the court. “Two of close family members of Saumya Chaurasia, including cousin Anurag Chaurasia and brother Amit Chaurasia, had taken bank entries from their overseas relatives and unsecured bogus hand loan entries from distant relatives to first create bank balance. These bank balances were then infused with extorted cash amount and used to buy valuable lands with minimum guideline rate based cheque amounts. Many of the transactions between the family members defy accounting logic and have been done only to layer the proceeds of crime and to claim them as untainted assets,” the ED counsel laid out the facts in its written submission before the PMLA court. Most importantly, according to the sources, ED underlined that the remand of the accused, Saumya Chaurasia is necessary for further investigation and to get the details of more transactions to enjoy the proceeds of crime which arc yet to be unearthed, The accused has not been forthcoming in providing details of such transactions; therefore, it is important to confront her with information/inputs obtained from various sources and with the information provided by other co-conspirators involved in the case. “She is an officer posted in the CM’s office and is known to be very close to various politicians and is influential person in the society.

The role of the political executives and other senior functionaries of the Chief Minister’s Office and State Bureaucracy needs to ascertained and she needs to be questioned regarding their role and involvement in this extortion racket. It is very much possible that by using her post and power, she will try to influence the witnesses and alter the documents in government departments. It is also reasonably believed that the witnesses in the transactions carried out by her could be threatened or influenced to depose in a way so as to misguide the investigation. It is further emphasized that large amount of payments made in cash out of the extorted Coal levy are still shrouded in mystery because of the use of code words and evasive answers by Suryakant Tiwari. Therefore, there is strong possibility that Saumya Chaurasia may use her influence to further hide and alienates these hitherto unearthed proceeds of crime, and thereby charged for the offence of money laundering as defined under section 3 of PMLA, 2002 punishable under section 4 of PMLA, 2002,” the counsel elaborated while urging the court to extend her remand to ED.