The Enforcement Directorate has intensified its investigation into the Jharkhand rural development scam, filing a chargesheet against engineers and officials for alleged money laundering and corruption.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) said on Wednesday it has filed a fresh chargesheet against more than a dozen retired and serving Jharkhand government engineers and officials in a money-laundering case linked to alleged irregularities in the state's rural development department.
The agency arrested former rural development minister of the state Alamgir Alam and his personal secretary, Sanjeev Kumar Lal, as part of its investigation in 2024. They are currently lodged in jail.
The fifth supplementary chargesheet in the case was filed on Tuesday before a special Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court in Jharkhand's capital Ranchi, the federal agency said in a statement.
The complaint arrays 14 departmental engineers and officials of the Rural Works Department (RWD), Rural Development Special Zone (RDSZ) and Jharkhand State Rural Road Development Authority (JSRRDA) as accused. This takes the total number of accused across all prosecution complaints (chargesheets) in the case to 36, the ED said.
The accused named in the latest chargesheet include retired chief engineers Singrai Tuti, Rajeev Lochan, Surendra Kumar and Pramod Kumar, executive engineers Santosh Kumar, Ajay Kumar, Ajay Tirkey, Raj Kumar Toppo, Ashok Kumar Gupta, Siddhant Kumar and Anil Kumar (retired) and retired assistant engineers Ram Pukar Ram and Ramesh Ojha. Former superintending engineer (engineer-in-chief) Umesh Kumar has also been made an accused, the agency said.
The ED has alleged that there was a "systematic" commission-and-bribery racket operating in Jharkhand's rural development department, where a fixed 3 per cent commission of the total tender value was collected from contractors in lieu of tender allotments.
The commission was distributed hierarchically -- 1.35 per cent to the then minister Alam (through his personal secretary), 0.65 per cent to 1 per cent to the departmental secretary and the balance to the chief engineers and their subordinate engineers, the ED has alleged.
Against a total tender allotment of Rs 3,048 crore, the ED has quantified the alleged proceeds of crime in the case at more than Rs 90 crore.
Apart from four earlier chargesheets, the agency has attached assets worth Rs 44 crore and seized Rs 38 crore in cash (including Rs 32.2 crore recovered from a premises linked to Lal).