The ED (Enforcement Directorate) on Thursday arrested woman IAS officer Ranu Sahu and a former assistant commissioner of the Tribal Development Department in the District Mineral Fund (DMF) scam of Chhattisgarh. The Raipur unit of ED made this arrest in a money laundering case related to irregularities in DMF.
According to the ED, IAS officer Ranu Sahu was arrested on October 17, while former assistant commissioner Maya Warrier was detained two days ago. The ED said that both the main accused have been sent to ED custody till October 22 by a special court in Raipur, which hears cases related to PMLA (Prevention of Money Laundering Act).
A money laundering probe into the DMF scam was initiated after studying three FIRs lodged by the Chhattisgarh Police in which the accused were accused of embezzling government funds by contractors in collusion with state government officials and political workers.
The ED said that DMF is a trust financed by miners which has been established with the objective of working for the benefit of the people affected by mining related projects and activities in all the districts of Chhattisgarh. According to the investigating agency, Sahu was the Collector of Korba district from May 2021 to June 2022 and Warrier was the Assistant Commissioner of Tribal Development Department in the same district from August 2021 to March 2023.
The agency alleged that, ‘During the tenure of these two in Korba, an organized system of collecting illegal commission from vendors/contractors was being operated.’ The investigation found that contractors paid huge amounts of commission/illegal bribes to officials, amounting to 25 to 40 per cent of the contract value.
‘The cash used to pay the bribe was generated by the vendors/contractors using residential entries,’ the ED said. The agency said the DMF fund allocated to Korba district since its inception till financial year 2022-23 was more than Rs 1,000 crore and with the prevailing rate, it generated commission worth hundreds of crores of rupees.