Ranchi, 29 October (HS). The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Tuesday morning raided the CA premises of senior Jharkhand IAS officer Vinay Choubey, Excise Department Joint Secretary Gajendra Singh and other close relatives and concerned officials.
The ED team is raiding the residence of Vinay Chaubey at Kanke Road and the residence of Gajendra Singh at Harmu. It is being told that this action has been taken in the liquor scam case.
The ED, which is probing the Chhattisgarh liquor scam, has found that during the tenure of the then Bhupesh government, the scam took place through the illegal syndicate of IAS officer Anil Tuteja, Excise Department MD Arunpati Tripathi and businessman Anwar Dhebar. From 2019 to 2022, illegal liquor was sold from government liquor shops with duplicate holograms, causing a loss of crores of rupees of revenue to the government.
A case was registered by the Economic Offenses Wing (EOW) of Raipur in connection with the alleged liquor scam of Rs 2050 crore in Chhattisgarh. Along with Chhattisgarh officials, Jharkhand's IAS and the then Excise Secretary Vinay Choubey have also been made accused in this case. Inspector of EOW Raipur first investigated the matter based on the statement of Vikas Singh, a resident of Argora police station area of Ranchi and then registered the case.
Vikas Singh has alleged that Chhattisgarh officials Anil Tuteja, Anwar Dhebar, Arunpati Tripathi and their syndicate caused a loss of billions of rupees of revenue to the Chhattisgarh government by running a liquor scam. It is also mentioned in the allegations that the same syndicate, in collaboration with Jharkhand officials, made changes in the excise policy of Jharkhand, which affected the revenue of the government. Apart from this, the officials of both the states together have also committed scam in man power supply. It is noteworthy that earlier in April 2023, IAS Vinay Choubey and Karan Satyarthi had recorded their statement in the Raipur office of ED in relation to the liquor scam.