Three bureaucrats, including two IAS officers, and three other accused walked out of Raipur central jail on Saturday morning, two days after being granted interim bail by the Supreme Court in three cases related to alleged irregularities in coal levy and District Mineral Foundation (DMF) fund.
The bureaucrats are IAS officers Sameer Vishnoi and Ranu Sahu, and Saumya Chaurasia, who was serving as deputy secretary to the former chief minister Bhupesh Baghel-led government.
The three were arrested by the Enforcement Directorate in an alleged money laundering case, wherein a syndicate of government servants and private persons have been accused of illegally levying money for the movement of coal.
According to the ED, the coal case involves an alleged cartel of bureaucrats, businessmen, politicians and middlemen, which was extorting Rs 25 per tonne of coal transported into Chhattisgarh. The proceeds of the crime, the ED alleged, were being used for “investing in benami assets, bribing officials to influence senior officers and on behalf of political executives of the state.” The alleged scam took place between 2020 to 2022.
As per 3,000 diary entries analysed by the ED, the total levy allegedly collected by the cartel is Rs 540 crore. The agency began its probe in 2022 and made several high-profile arrests in the case, filing multiple chargesheets and naming several accused.
While Vishnoi (posted as director of Geology and Mining at the time) was arrested in October 2022, Chaurasia was arrested in December 2022, and Sahu, who was posted as collector in Korba from June 2021 to June 2022, was arrested in July 2023.
Speaking with , their lawyer Faizal Rizwi said, “A total of eight people – Saumya Chaurasiya, Ranu Sahu, Sameer Vishnoi, Suryakant Tiwari, Rajinkant Tiwari, Nikhil Chandrakar, Virendra Jaiswal and Sandeep Naik – got bail in three cases. Two cases related to coal levy were registered by the ED and Chhattisgarh’s Anti-Corruption Bureau, and a third was in the DMF fund case. Except for Suryakant and Nikhil (also arrested in other cases), the remaining six have been released on bail.”
While granting bail, the Supreme Court laid down certain conditions to ensure the accused do not interfere with the case. The order states, “As far as the petitioners Ranu Sahu, Suryakant Tiwari, Sameer Vishnoi and Saumya Chaurasiya are concerned, it is directed that they shall not stay in the State of Chhattisgarh till further orders, except that they shall remain present before the investigating agency or the trial court as and when required.” They have been asked to provide their new address outside of Chhattisgarh to the police.
“In the event the petitioners are found to contact the witnesses or influence them in any manner or to tamper with evidence, the same shall be taken as a misuse of concession of interim bail,” the court said. They have also been asked to deposit their passports immediately before the special court.
