In a 5,700-page chargesheet, the Enforcement Directorate has named Jharkhand’s former chief minister Hemant Soren as the prime accused along with five of his associates, in a money laundering case linked to an alleged land scam. It includes ‘relied upon documents’ labelled as being from the chief minister’s office, seized from the office of another accused who directly managed the land deals.
The chargesheet, known as the prosecution complaint, was filed on March 30 with an attachment order for the land parcels worth Rs 30 crore. News18 has learnt that it has 218 pages with operative details of the case, including 5,500 pages of ‘relied upon documents’.
At least five to six files have details of the land deals, other documents and deeds as well as the money that came from the land, which the ED recovered from the office of a person under arrest in the case. A source in the central agency said the files have notes referring to the chief minister’s office (CMO) and are even labelled ‘CMO’. These have been attached in the chargesheet, which includes payment receipts for the land deals and the plans for building an integrated banquet hall complex.
Hemant Soren was arrested on January 31 after a seven-hour interrogation and high drama over nominating his successor. Following a family feud – opposition from his sister-in-law Sita Soren and brother Basant Soren, both JMM MLAs – he handed over the charge to his loyalist Champai Soren, who was holding the charge of the state’s transport minister. Sita later joined the BJP and has now been fielded as a candidate from Dumka in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
It had taken eight ignored summons, a disappearance from his official residence and choosing to be “untraceable” for more than 40 hours while officers waited to question him, and an FIR against senior ED officials under the SC/ST Act, to take the former chief minister into custody.
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