New Delhi: Before her arrest in a money laundering case linked to diversion of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) funds in May 2022, Pooja Singhal had the reputation of a civil servant who could work with political bosses of all affiliations.
This was amply seen in her career graph, be it under chief ministers Arjun Munda, Raghubar Das of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), or Hemant Soren of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM).
From having served as agriculture secretary as well as Officer on Special Duty (OSD) for ‘Momentum Jharkhand’ during Das’ reign from 2014 to 2019, the UP born civil servant was secretary in Jharkhand’s mines department at the time of her arrest during the JMM rule.
Now, after being granted bail on 7 December last year, the Jharkhand government revoked the suspension of Singhal, who, it said in a notification Tuesday evening, will contribute to the Department of Personnel, Administrative Reforms and Raj Bhasa.
ThePrint looks into the ED’s allegations and case against the 2000-batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer, her rise and controversies as well as the political row that has ensued after Singhal’s reinstatement.
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The case
In its probe into alleged diversion of MGNREGS funds worth Rs 18.6 crore, the ED had picked up Ram Binod Prasad Sinha, a former junior engineer in the Jharkhand government, from West Bengal in June, 2020.
This was after the ED registered a money laundering case in 2018 based on 16 FIRs lodged by the Jharkhand Police related to alleged embezzlement of funds from Khunti district when Singhal was the Deputy Commissioner (DC) between 2009 and 2010.
Sinha, in a statement recorded under Section 50 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), allegedly conceded paying up commission to senior officials in the Jharkhand government. An audit of the works carried out by Sinha allegedly revealed an embezzlement of Rs 18.06 crore from the MGNREGS under her watch.
On 6 May 2022, an ED team swooped on multiple locations linked to Singhal, her chartered accountant (CA) Suman Kumar and a hospital run by her husband Abhishek Jha at the heart of Jharkhand’s capital Ranchi.
In the searches, the probe agency unearthed huge sums of money in cash from the residence of Suman Kumar, who allegedly confessed in a statement that the cash belonged to Singhal.
Subsequently, Singhal was arrested from Ranchi on 11 May 2022, while a prosecution complaint was lodged against her two months later. She was suspended a day after her arrest by the ED.
In the prosecution complaint, the ED said that Suman Kumar, was filing Singhal’s income tax (I-T) returns since 2012. He had allegedly passed on Rs 3 crore cash to builders for purchasing land for Pulse Hospital, run by Jha and audited by him on Singhal’s instructions, agency alleged.
Unable to explain the source of such huge sums of money at his residence and office, the CA allegedly gave a statement that he was managing the cash on her behalf.
Additionally, the ED has alleged in the prosecution complaint that since their marriage in 2011, both Singhal and Jha have been depositing huge sums of money into bank accounts which was illegally amassed during her tenure as DC in Khunti and Palamu districts.
The ED alleged that the couple had deposited Rs 1.43 crore into their bank accounts which was way more than the income disclosed in the I-T returns filed in the (2011) year preceding the deposit. Out of this Rs 1.43 crore, Jha transferred Rs 43 lakh to Usha Construction to purchase the first floor of Orchid Building where Pulse Diagnostic and Imaging Centre was started.
After her bail plea was denied by the PMLA court in August 2022, Singhal suffered another setback in the Jharkhand High Court in November 2022 when her petition was rejected. She moved the Supreme Court the same year but her plea was rejected in April 2024.
Seamless run
After clearing the civil services in her first attempt, Singhal started her administrative career as a Sub-Divisional Officer (SDO) in Jharkhand’s Hazaribagh district. Singhal was 21 when she cracked the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) examination.
Over a period of two decades, Singhal had a seamless run of tenures with the Jharkhand government, occupying various key positions despite serious charges of corruption and violation of norms against her.
But controversies were not new to the high-flying IAS officer. Just before her arrest two years ago, a former civil servant had recalled how Singhal’s name had come up in an alleged case of transfer of land.
“It was one of the most brazen cases of wrongdoing. She transferred 83 acres of land belonging to tribals and some forest land, in complete violation of provisions of the Chota Nagpur Tenancy Act, 1908, to a private company for mining at Kathautia. She did not seek the permission of the state government, which is mandatory,” the retired officer had told ThePrint.
This episode pertained to the period when Singhal was the Palamu DC in 2012-13.
A measure of her influence was seemingly palpable when the ED confiscated properties linked to her in 2022. Apart from the hospital in Ranchi, a diagnostic centre and two land parcels were among the attached immovable properties whose valuation was over Rs 100 crore at that time. Singhal alone had assets worth Rs 82.77 crore.
Some rumblings, few at unease
While both the JMM and the Congress have defended the move to reinstate Singhal based on “process” after a committee chaired by the chief secretary cleared the deck, there is a sense of disquiet in the former over the timing and rapid pace of the reinstatement process.
Senior Congress leaders in Jharkhand said that there should have been a more cooling period before bringing Singhal to the government since there were serious charges of corruption and the trial was pending.
“This is too rapid a process for our liking. We should have waited a little more before doing this,” a senior Congress leader told ThePrint.
Another senior Congress leader said that although Singhal has not been convicted yet, her reinstatement has earned the state government bad press. “I don’t agree with this quick reinstatement. We should have waited for the trial to conclude or at least a favourable order from court such as was the case with Chief Minister Hemant Soren,” the Congress leader told ThePrint.
Former Jharkhand Congress president Rajesh Thakur, however, said Singhal was not the first such bureaucrat to have been reinstated after coming out on bail.
“…the decision has been taken only after a committee chaired by the chief secretary decided on it. We have zero tolerance for corruption but the ED has not been able to prove anything against her so far and that has been a trend in states ruled by opposition parties,” Thakur told ThePrint.
JMM spokesperson Manoj Pandey said that the BJP has been indulging in politics despite the precedent of retired IAS officer Sajal Chakraborty, who was suspended for his role in the fodder scam in 1997. “His suspension was revoked when Arjun Munda was the chief minister. Singhal got clean chit when Raghubar Das was the chief minister. This is plain doublespeak by the BJP,” Pandey told ThePrint.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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IAS officers serving in Jharkhand are openly corrupt. They do not even feel the need to hide their corruption. It happens in broad daylight and in front of everyone. The sheer brazenness of the corrupt IAS officers in the state is shocking.
And all of it happens under the patronage of the ruling JMM.
Such a shame!
An utterly corrupt IAS officer has been reinstated. Now she will have even more audacity and loot the common man with a new found vigour.
Such IAS officers are a shame for the nation.
The JMM government is brazenly corrupt and is shameless enough to reinstate this officer.