New Delhi: Acquisition, possession and use of land obtained through large syndicates that hatched conspiracies, and hence being “directly” involved in “processes related to proceeds of crime”. These were the Enforcement Directorate’s (ED’s) grounds of arrest as it took Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) leader Hemant Soren in custody Wednesday night in connection with a land scam case.
Soren, who tendered his resignation as Jharkhand chief minister before his arrest in Ranchi, allegedly held ownership of a parcel of land in the city that was procured through a syndicate involving Bhanu Pratap Prasad, the revenue sub-inspector in Bargain circle office, Ranchi, according to the ED’s arrest memo, which ThePrint has reviewed.
Soren was sent to judicial custody for a day by a special PMLA (Prevention of Money Laundering Act) court in Ranchi, which is expected to pronounce its order on the ED’s request for 10-day remand later today.
In its remand application to the court, which ThePrint has seen, the ED said Soren had been informed about his arrest by the probe agency but was “reluctant to receive the orders (arrest memo) before resigning” from the CM’s post. The agency claimed that since Soren left for the Jharkhand Governor’s house “without consent and without completing the ongoing proceedings, the written grounds of arrest could be served to him at 10 pm (Wednesday)”.
The case against Soren goes back to alleged illegal sale of 4.55 acres of land parcels in Ranchi in October 2021, against which a tax collector with the Ranchi Municipal Corporation had filed a police complaint in 2022. The Ranchi Police subsequently registered an FIR against one Pradip Bagchi, following which administrative officials such as Chhavi Ranjan and two other alleged aides of Soren, came under the ED lens.
As part of the probe into the FIR against Bagchi in the case, the ED raided multiple locations, including offices and the residence of Prasad, in Jharkhand in April last year.
The ED mentioned in the arrest memo to Soren that during the raids at Prasad’s premises, it seized 11 trunks of property documents and 17 original registers of records in which ownership details of land have been maintained.
The ED has claimed the ownership records in these 17 registers were tampered with and that they should be in a circle office and not on the private premises of Prasad.
Based on its findings, the ED wrote to the Jharkhand government to file an FIR against Prasad.
The agency said that it had seized Prasad’s mobile phone which had details of 8.5 acres of land which were in possession of Soren.
The agency said it has also recorded statements of several persons under section 50 of the PMLA which established that those adjacently-positioned pieces of land belonged to the former CM.
“It is revealed that Bhanu Pratap Prasad was actively involved in hatching conspiracies with other persons to acquire and conceal various properties in illegal manner including the properties which are illegally acquired and possessed by Shri Hemant Soren. The details of the properties, which are illegally acquired and possessed by Shri Hemant Soren have also been recovered from the mobile phone of Bhanu Pratap Prasad,” the arrest memo signed by ED’s assistant director of Ranchi zone office reads.
It adds: “The said list of 12 landed properties which are adjacently situated and all together make up a very big property of an area of about 8.5 acres have been recovered from the mobile phone of Bhanu Pratap Prasad.”
“The photo of the above-mentioned list of landed properties also bears certain hand-written remarks made by Bhanu Pratap Prasad, after he had made verification of those parcels of land. Investigation has revealed that this property is and has been illegally acquired and possessed by Shri Hemant Soren,” states the ED.
“That statement of several persons have been recorded under section 50 of PMLA, 2002, which also establishes that property is under illegal acquisition, possession and use of Shri Hemant Soren and it has been kept concealed by him,” it adds.
In its remand application, the ED said that Prasad himself carried out a physical verification of the land on the order of the Chief Minister’s Office (CMO) under Soren.
“Bhanu Pratap Prasad had himself conducted physical verification of the land on instruction which was passed on to him from CMO through the circle officer,” the agency said.
Soren, in a letter to the ED Monday, refuted the charges and said the piece of land in question can’t be sold or alienated in any manner, and that it had been owned by one Pahan family for five decades.
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Soren moves Supreme Court
Soren has moved a writ petition in the Supreme Court claiming that ED officers took him under detention from the Raj Bhavan where he had gone to resign from the CM’s post.
Calling his arrest as “illegal, malafide and without jurisdiction”, Soren has stated in the petition that it was a move to topple a democratically elected government.
Claiming that he was not an accused, nor related to proceeds of crime connected to the predicate offence in the case, which was the FIR filed by the Ranchi Police against Prasad, Soren said in the petition that the ED was attempting a “fishing and roving inquiry” at “the behest of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)”, which is a ruling party at the Centre and in opposition in the state (Jharkhand).
Soren also challenged the presence of documents related to the parcel of land in question and said that neither is a list of documents recovered from a third party admissible as evidence nor can it form a ground of arrest in the case.
Soren reiterated the point that he raised in his letter to the ED Monday that the piece of land in question belonged to the Pahan family and was not eligible for sale under the Chota Nagpur Tenancy Act.
“For that the entire proceedings against the Petitioner arising out of the ECIR/RN ZO/25/2023 are without jurisdiction as there is no predicate offence against the Petitioner. Therefore, ED has no jurisdiction to investigate and arrest the Petitioner in the said case. Since the very initiation of the proceedings as well as the investigation along with the illegal arrest by the Respondents in a totally arbitrary and high-handed manner deserves to be set aside and Petitioner is entitled to be released from the illegal arrest,” Soren prayed in his writ petition.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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