New Delhi: The minister extracted a 1.5-percent “commission” from all department tenders including a tranche of Rs 3 crore in September 2022, his officer on special duty (OSD) did the job of collecting the cash, and Rs 32.2 crore was found at the residence of the OSD’s house help — these are the Enforcement Directorate’s allegations against Jharkhand Rural Development Minister Alamgir Alam.
Alam was arrested Wednesday evening after two days of questioning by investigating officers in a case pertaining to alleged corruption and bribery in his department — becoming the first incumbent cabinet minister in the state’s history to be arrested.
In its remand application, accessed by ThePrint, the ED further alleges that Alam has a “crucial and pivotal role” in the four-year-old money-laundering case, which stems from a complaint registered by the state’s Anti Corruption Bureau in Jamshedpur in 2019.
The special PMLA court sent Alam to the agency’s custody for six days till 22 May.
‘Top to bottom’ involved
In the remand application, the agency alleges that Veerendra Kumar Ram, an engineer in the rural development department, collected a “commission” from the tenders passed. A fixed rate of 1.5 percent of each tender’s value was taken by the minister.
The agency further alleges that the process of collection and distribution of the “commissions” was managed by assistant engineers and Alam had in September 2022 pocketed Rs 3 crore from just one.
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The Rs 32.2 crore cash was recovered from the residence of the OSD’s house help, and while searching, officers also found the minister’s letters and letterheads. This, the ED alleges, established that the premises were in use to store the minister’s documents and cash. OSD Sanjeev Kumar Lal and his house help, Jahangir Alam, have also been arrested.
The probe agency alleges that officers from the “top to bottom” in the rural development department were involved in corruption. The remand application says Lal handled the collection of “commissions” on behalf of Alam and others. “He also plays a pivotal role in managing the tenders and collection of commission from engineers, also the said percentage of commission is distributed in a mechanised manner to higher-ups of government. It is further submitted that several officials from top to bottom of Rural Development Department are involved in this nexus and the huge payments were usually received in cash which were later laundered which needs to be unearthed (sic),” the agency alleged.
Veteran Congress leader Alam has won from Pakur continuously except in 2009. The first criminal case against him was registered in 2020 by the Jharkhand Police on the complaint of one Shambhu Nandan, who alleged that he was stopped from participating in a tender process.
The constituency representative of former chief minister Hemant Soren, Pankaj Mishra, was also booked in the case. The police soon gave him a clean chit, but he came under the ED’s scanner when the central agency was probing the alleged illegal sand mining case in Sahebganj, in which Mishra was later arrested and chargesheeted.
(Edited by Tikli Basu)
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