Suspended IAS officer Pooja Singhal sent to judicial custody till June 8

A special Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court in Ranchi sent suspended IAS officer Pooja Singhal to judicial custody till June 8 in the mining case. Singhal was in the custody of Enforcement Directorate since her arrest on May 11.

The court direction comes a day after the ED carried out raids at six locations in Ranchi and one location in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur in connection with the money laundering case against Singhal, who was serving as the mining secretary at the time of her arrest.

The probe agency carried out raids at the premises of Ranchi-based builder Anil Jha and another person named Vishal Chaudhary, news agency ANI had reported.

The ED is probing a money laundering case in which the money earmarked for the completion of government projects under MGNREGA in Khunti district of Jharkhand was allegedly embezzled. A Jharkhand government engineer arrested in 2020 had claimed to have paid five per cent commission out of the defrauded funds to the Khunti district administration. Singhal, a 2000 batch IAS officer, had served as the deputy commissioner of the district between 2009 and 2010.

Singhal was arrested after raids in several locations across four states on May 11, A day, later she was suspended by the Jharkhand government.

The ED on Tuesday interrogated the district mining officer of Sahebganj in connection with the money laundering case, ANI had reported. Bibhuti Kumar, the DMO, was summoned twice to join the probe but he didn’t turn up earlier on the pretext of his daughter’s wedding. The probe agency has already grilled the DMOs of Pakur and Dumka.

The agency had informed the court that interrogation of district mining officers and their confrontation with Pooja Singhal is very crucial to unearth the roots of money laundering.