The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has provisionally attached movable and 91 immovable properties worth Rs 152.31 crore belonging to Suryakant Tiwari, Chief Minister’s Deputy Secretary Saumya Chaurasia, IAS Sameer Vishnoi, Sunil Agarwal and others in coal levy extortion case. The properties include cash, jewellery, flats, coal Washeries and land.

The ED attached agriculture land measuring 63.38 acre in Hirri, Potiya and Sevati in Durg, 10 acres in Rasni & Arang in Raipur, 12 acre commercial land in Thakuraintola in Durg, and an arms house, etc.

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The Central agency had conducted searches at more than 75 locations, including the mining departments at district collector’s offices of Korba and Raigarh and collected incriminating evidence. Further investigation by the agency revealed that as part of a grand conspiracy, policy changes were made to modify an existing efficient online system of issuance of transport permits, to introduce a manual layer where Coal users were forced to apply for NOC with State Mining officers.

Armed with this government order, the extortion at the rate of Rs 25 per tonne of transported Coal started with Suryakant Tiwari as their key henchman at the ground level who deployed his employees in various regions to extort money from Coal Transporters & Industrialists. His team was physically coordinating with lower level government functionaries and Coal transporters & representatives of user companies, an ED communiqué claimed.

Since his employees were spread across the state, they maintained WhatsApp groups, excel sheets of each Coal Delivery Order and the extorted amounts and shared them with Suryakant Tiwari, who in turn maintained detailed handwritten Diaries of the incoming bribe amounts & their utilization for purchase of benami lands, payment of bribes, payments for political expenditure etc.

Hinting that this kind of systemic extortion was not possible without the knowledge and active participation of the state machinery, the agency said it ran uninterrupted without a single FIR and collected around Rs 500 crore in two years. It clearly indicates that the accused were acting in a concerted manner at the instructions of person(s) at the highest level, having command & control over the state machinery.

The ED investigation so far has revealed that an amount of at least Rs 540 Crore has been extorted in the last two years. The ED has analysed thousands of hand-written entries in dairies and bank accounts along with WhatsApp chats recovered.

The ED claimed that Suryakant Tiwari, Saumya Chaurasia, Sameer Vishnoi and others have used their relatives to create benami assets. Land deals were done at minimum cheque amount and large amounts of cash generated through the extortion was infused to buy the assets. Most of the time, the benamidaars did not even have the minimum capital for the land deals.

Earlier, the ED had arrested IAS Sameer Vishnoi, trader Sunil Agarwal, Laxmikant Tiwari and Suryakant Tiwari in October and nabbed Saumya Chaurasia in this case last week. The agency on Friday filed a prosecution complaint against Suryakant and other accused before the PMLA Special Court Raipur whereas Saumya is presently in the custody of the ED.