Retired IAS officer Anil Tuteja has been remanded to 14 days in judicial custody by a Meerut court in connection with the alleged Chhattisgarh liquor scam.
Alongside Tuteja, the court has also placed businessman Anwar Dhebar and former Excise Department official AP Tripathi in judicial custody until July 29. The Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force (STF) presented Dhebar and Tripathi in court.
Raipur police escorted Tuteja to Meerut on Saturday night. Tuteja is implicated in an FIR registered in Uttar Pradesh related to counterfeit holograms, prompting the Meerut court to issue a production warrant against him.
Simultaneously, the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) presented four accused in the counterfeit hologram supply case to the special court in Raipur. The accused include Deepak Duari, Amit Singh, Anurag Dwivedi, and Dilip Pandey, the state head of Prism Hologram Company. The court has remanded them in custody for three days.
The accused have filed a petition in the Allahabad High Court challenging the FIR registered in the counterfeit hologram case. The FIR, registered at the Kasna police station in Noida, was initiated by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in July 2023 as part of the investigation into the Chhattisgarh liquor scam. The UP STF is currently investigating the case.
The FIR implicates former Special Secretary of the Excise Department AP Tripathi, businessman Anwar Dhebar, retired IAS officer Anil Tuteja, former Excise Commissioner Niranjan Das, and Vidhu Gupta, director of the hologram supply company Prism.
According to the FIR, Noida-based company PHSF received an illicit tender from the Chhattisgarh Excise Department for hologram supply, despite being ineligible to participate in the tender process. Large quantities of counterfeit holograms were supplied to sell illegal country liquor bottles from government shops in Chhattisgarh.
It is noteworthy that in July 2023, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) filed a case against Niranjan Das, Anwar Dhebar, AP Tripathi, and retired IAS officer Anil Tuteja, along with Vidhu Gupta of PHSF, in connection with the alleged Chhattisgarh liquor scam. Charges include sections 420, 467, 468, 471, 484, and 120B of the IPC, as well as sections 7/13.7(a) of the Prevention of Corruption Act.