The arrest came days after the ED conducted raids at multiple locations related to Pooja Singhal, including at her Chartered Accountant Suman Kumar. The agency had unearthed a total of over Rs 17 crore from Kumar’s home.
Ranchi: Jharkhand mining secretary Pooja Singhal was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Wednesday in an alleged case of money laundering. Before the arrest, Singhal and his husband were questioned for several hours by the ED officials.
The 2000-batch IAS officer will be produced before the designated court for a hearing into the money laundering cases in Ranchi, a senior official associated with the central agency’s probe said.
The arrest came days after the ED conducted raids at multiple locations related to Singhal, including at her Chartered Accountant Suman Kumar. The agency had unearthed a total of over Rs 17 crore from Kumar’s home.
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ED officials had brought along with them cash counting machines to ascertain the exact amount of cash. The agency has also recovered nearly Rs 1.8 crore cash during the raid at other premises in Ranchi.
According to a statement issued by the ED, the agency carried out searches at about 18-20 premises in Jharkhand, Bihar, West Bengal, Delhi, Punjab and a few other states under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
ED’s raids were carried out in connection with a money laundering case in which former junior engineer of the Jharkhand government Ram Binod Prasad Sinha was arrested on June 17, 2020 from the North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal by ED after he was booked by it under the PMLA.
According to the FIRs and chargesheets filed by the state vigilance bureau against Sinha, it was alleged the he abused his official position and indulged in embezzlement of Rs 18.06 crore of government funds by way of forgery and misappropriation.
He was booked by the vigilance department under the relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code pertaining to cheating and corruption for allegedly defrauding public money and investing the same in his own name as well as in the name of his family members while working as the junior engineer between April 1, 2008 and March 21, 2011.
