Raipur: ED arrested Chhattisgarh CM office Deputy Secretary Saumya Chaurasia on Friday for alleged money laundering. She was sent to four day custody for investigation.

She was taken for a health check-up after the arrest. Escorted by the CRPF, she was then taken to a local Court. The ED arrested IAS officer Sameer Vishnoi and two others in October after conducting raids in the case. The money laundering investigation, launched after the ED took note of a complaint by the income tax department, is linked to an alleged scam in which illegal levy of ₹ 25 per tonne had been extorted from every tonne of coal transported in Chhattisgarh by a cartel involving senior bureaucrats, businessmen, politicians and middlemen.

Saumya Chaurasia’s home was also raided in February 2020. The Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel had called the raid by the ED is a political revenge and claimed there was an attempt to destabilise his Government. He alleged in tweets that the ED and IT officers thrashed detained businessmen and officers with rods.

We have come to know about incidents of detaining people without informing local police, serving them summons on the spot, making them sit in murga position, stopping them without food and water till late night, beating them with rods, threatening them with imprisoning them for life by ED officials, he said. ED officials should make video recordings during interrogations, he added.

The investigation agencies like ED and IT should take legal action against those involved in corruption. We welcome it, but the way illegal activities are coming to the fore during the investigations by the ED and IT department are not at all acceptable, he said.