SC issues notice to ED over claims of coercion to implicate Bhupesh Baghel

The Supreme Court has issued a notice to the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in response to a Chhattisgarh government application accusing the agency of coercing 52 officers of the state excise department to make statements implicating chief minister Bhupesh Baghel and other top functionaries in an alleged liquor scam.

“We are not passing any order. We are asking the ED to provide all details. We will first consider their response and take up the matter next week,” a vacation bench of justices JK Maheshwari and PS Narasimha said on Thursday and posted the matter for hearing on Monday.

The court also sought the ED’s response to Chhattisgarh excise commissioner Niranjan Das’s petition alleging harassment despite cooperating with the agency’s probe into the alleged scam. It heard another petition of three other accused in the case, who have not allegedly been cooperating with the probe and absconded.

Additional solicitor-general SV Raju, who appeared for ED, opposed the application of the state government and accused it of protecting its officials. “It is not required to be heard in the matter.”

Raju said it was a “big scam” worth over ₹308 crore. “They have directly approached the Supreme Court when they ought to have first approached the high court,” Raju said. He sought to present his arguments in an affidavit.

Senior advocates Mukul Rohatgi and Siddharth Dave, who appeared for Das and the other accused, said the court entertained writ petitions other accused filed in the same case and requested similar orders.

In one batch of cases, the court on May 17 told ED not to create an atmosphere of fear. “If there is a scam, you catch the right people…It is not that everybody is an accused,” a Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul-led bench said then.

Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, who represented the state government, pointed out that in the May 17 matter the court entertained the state’s impleadment application as ED’s investigation lacked jurisdiction. He said there was no underlying predicate offence forming the basis for ED to proceed with its probe.

ED claimed the money laundering case in the alleged liquor scam was linked to a 2022 income tax department charge sheet filed against bureaucrat Anil Tuteja and others in a Delhi court. It added the state government handed out liquor licenses selectively to certain manufacturers for a commission.

The state government accused ED of acting at the behest of its “political masters” and said its actions were politically motivated to target Bhagel.