Bhupesh Baghel’s office posted on X: “When the false case going on for seven years was dismissed in the court, today the guests of ED entered the Bhilai residence of former chief minister, Congress General Secretary Bhupesh Baghel, this morning…”
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Monday raided 14 locations in Durg district of Chhattisgarh, including residential and other premises owned by ex-chief minister Bhupesh Baghel, and his son, Chaitanya, as part of an ongoing investigation into the state’s alleged liquor scam.
According to ED sources, Chaitanya is allegedly the recipient of proceeds of crime generated from the liquor scam, with a staggering amount of around Rs 2,161 crore allegedly siphoned through various fraudulent schemes. The cumulative worth of Chhattisgarh’s liquor scam now stands around Rs 4,000 crore, with investigators looking at the fresh leads.
The former chief minister’s office released a statement on X as the raids began. “When the false case going on for seven years was dismissed in the court, today the guests of ED entered the Bhilai residence of former chief minister, Congress General Secretary Bhupesh Baghel, this morning. If someone is trying to stop Congress in Punjab through such conspiracies, then they have misunderstood the situation,” said the statement.
This action comes almost a month after the arrest of the state’s former excise minister, Kawasi Lakma, in January. Lakma’s arrest set off a chain of events that intensified the scrutiny of Baghel and his family even further.
A senior official of the ED said the searches were focused on properties and other assets linked to Baghel and his family, including Chaitanya, and close associates of Chaitanya and Laxmi Narayan Bansal, also known as Pappu Bansal. The ED’s extensive search operation shows a significant escalation in the investigation, which has already implicated several high-profile figures, including an ex-minister and a few bureaucrats.
PROBE BEGAN IN 2023
Apart the multiple corruption cases in West Bengal and Jharkhand, the ED is investigating at least three major corruption cases — liquor, mining or coal levy, and paddy or PDS scams — in Chhattisgarh. At least five senior IAS officers were raided and arrested, and a senior ex-minister arrested in connection with three separate corruption cases in the state.
In 2018, two liquor companies, manufacturers and sellers of foreign liquor in India, filed writ petitions before the state’s high court, alleging that the process of procurement of liquor in the state was “arbitrary, non-transparent and vague, as it has conferred unguided and unbridled discretion in the process of procurement of liquor”. News18 has reviewed the petition.
The ED initiated a probe into the excise or liquor scam of Chhattisgarh in 2023. The probe revealed how a nexus between three distillery owners or distributors and a group of government officials caused around Rs 3,800-crore (out of books) loss to the government exchequer.
The Chhattisgarh government-owned shops sell liquor in the state, and there was no provision for private shops earlier in the state. According to the excise department documents, accessed by News 18, the state has 672 such retail shops, and the shops generate sale proceeds in cash amounting to Rs 28-32 crore per day on an average. However, the illegal liquor syndicates started selling unaccounted and unprocessed liquor across the state, allegedly with the help of a businessman-politician-bureaucrat nexus.
The ED arrested Arun Pati Tripathi, special secretary in the excise department, in connection with the case, who, according to the investigators, changed the liquor policy to suit the nexus. Later, the ED questioned Anil Tuteja and Ranu Sahu too, both of them senior IAS officers, serving in the state.
With the directorate renewing its focus on the scam, the political fallout is all set to continue, with the former CM facing mounting pressure over the scale of financial mismanagement in his administration.
Article source: news18.com
