The State Economic Offences Investigation and Anti-Corruption Bureau (SEOIACB) on Tuesday arrested three more accused, in its due course of ongoing investigation into two of Chhattisgarh’s most consequential multi-crore corruption cases – custom milling and tendu patta bonus embezzlement. Anil Tuteja, a senior bureaucrat, and Anwar Dhebar, a key figure previously linked to liquor-related corruption, were formally arrested through a production warrant from their existing judicial custody and presented before the Special Economic Offences Court in Raipur. The arrest pertains to the custom milling scam (Crime No. 01/2024), in which officials and intermediaries allegedly extorted levies from rice millers under the guise of official procedures.

 

Their arrest follows the earlier 3,500-page chargesheet filed against Manoj Kumar Soni and Roshan Chandrakar, highlighting a deeply embedded system of rent-seeking in the food procurement chain. Both Tuteja and Dhebar face charges under IPC Sections 120B (criminal conspiracy), 384 (extortion), and 409 (criminal breach of trust), along with Sections 11, 13(1)(a), and 13(2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, as amended in 2018. The bureau has secured police remand to pursue further custodial interrogation. In a parallel development, SEOIACB also arrested Rajshekhar Puranik, committee manager of the Phulbagdi Primary Minor Forest Produce Cooperative Society and supervisor at the Sukma district forest union, in connection with the Rs 7 crore tendu patta bonus scam (Crime No. 26/2025). The case involves fraudulent withholding and misappropriation of funds meant as incentives for tribal tendu leaf collectors during the 2021 and 2022 seasons. According to SEOIACB, Puranik colluded with suspended Divisional Forest Officer Ashok Kumar Patel and several other committee managers and forest staff to divert large portions of the bonus amount through ghost beneficiaries and forged documentation.

 

His arrest comes after 11 others-four forest department staff and seven committee functionaries-were taken into custody between April and June 2025. The scam has exposed systematic manipulation of public benefit schemes through institutional connivance. Both scams have drawn intense scrutiny for compromising critical state welfare mechanisms-one in foodgrain procurement, the other in forest-based income generation for tribal populations. Investigators are now conducting forensic audits to trace financial diversions and link them to disproportionate assets of the accused. Senior SEOIACB officials told ‘The Hitavada’ that both cases remain open for further arrests and asset tracking. “We are committed to exposing the full architecture of these scams, which have undermined public trust and deprived marginal communities of their legal dues,” one officer said.