The Enforcement Directorate on Tuesday said it recently conducted searches as part of a money laundering investigation into an alleged Rs 30 crore fraud in the marriage assistance scheme of the Madhya Pradesh government.
The raids were undertaken on October 3 at seven locations in Bhopal, Vidisha, Katni and Chhatarpur districts under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
The probe is linked to Shobhit Tripathi, a former CEO of Sironj (Vidisha district) Janpad Panchayat and some others, the agency said in a statement.
The ED case stems from an FIR of Madhya Pradesh Police's Economic Offences Wing (EOW) against Tripathi which alleged that the ex-CEO of the Janpad Panchayat, in collusion with others, siphoned off Rs 30.18 crore in the name of 5,923 "suspicious marriages" conducted under the Marriage Assistance Scheme of the state government between 2019 and November 2021.
Tripathi, along with some data entry operators, "misused" his position to "divert" the funds originally allocated for benefitting construction workers' families, the ED said. -- PTI