Due to arrest of IAS officer during investigation of illegal mining and issuance of summons to the Chief Minister, people started complaining about all kinds of cases to ED. In this sequence, ED received a complaint related to purchase and sale of government and private land on the basis of fake documents in the state. In these complaints made by the people, the actions of other people including IAS officers of the state were mentioned. ED deployed one of its officers to monitor these complaints. After reviewing the complaints made by the people of the state, the ED decided to investigate the land issue.
In these complaints, information was received regarding fraudulent purchase and sale of army land and the people and officers involved in it. On the basis of this information, ED registered an IIR based on the FIR lodged by an employee of Ranchi Municipal Corporation in connection with the purchase and sale of army land. The Municipal Corporation had lodged this FIR on the basis of the investigation report of the then Divisional Commissioner Nitin Madan Kulkarni. In this ECIR, ED included the facts mentioned in the report of the Divisional Commissioner regarding the land in Hehal area.
In the report of the Divisional Commissioner, it was mentioned that the then Deputy Commissioner of Ranchi had wrongly given a decision in favor of certain people and later cordoned off the land by deploying 150 police personnel, but no action has been taken from the government level in the light of this report. No action was taken against him. Even the proposal to seek clarification from the then Deputy Commissioner Chhavi Ranjan was rejected. ED also registered the FIR lodged in Sadar police station in the case of land misappropriation as IIR. This FIR was registered in the light of the order of the Judicial Magistrate, but the police refused to consider it a case of forgery and closed the case by calling it a civil case.
But during the investigation in this case by ED, after raiding the premises of the then Deputy Commissioner Chhavi Ranjan, businessman Vishnu Aggarwal and others and arrest of the then Deputy Commissioner, the police considered it a case of forgery and started a fresh investigation. During the investigation of the land case, some details of the land were found from the mobile phone of the ED revenue employee. Based on the information received during the interrogation of the revenue employee, ED raided the house of Chief Minister’s Press Advisor Abhishek Prasad alias Pintu’s PS Uday Shankar.
The data obtained from the mobile of the revenue employee was sent to Badgai zonal office through Uday Shankar. After finding indications of tampering in the land documents recovered from the house of a revenue employee, the ED shared the information obtained during the investigation under Section 66(2) of PMLA with the state government and requested to register an FIR. After this, the government lodged an FIR in this case against the revenue employee in Sadar police station. ED registered this FIR as IIR and started investigation. In this case, ED summoned the Chief Minister and arrested him after interrogation.