THE JHARKHAND STORY DESK
Jaipur, Nov 3: As part of its money laundering investigation into the purported Jal Jeevan Mission scam, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) conducted raids in poll-bound Rajasthan on Friday, including at the home of a senior IAS officer, according to sources.
The raids were carried out in 25 different sites in Jaipur, including the places of Public Health Engineering (PHE) department IAS official Subodh Agarwal.
Sources have revealed that additional individuals with connections to the case are now being brought under the purview of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
Similar raids had been conducted in September in this instance by the investigating agency.
The Rajasthan anti-corruption bureau (ACB) filed a formal complaint (FIR) alleging that Padamchand Jain, the owner of Shree Shyam Tubewell Company, Mahesh Mittal, the owner of Shree Ganpati Tubewell Company, and others were involved in “giving bribes” to public servants in order to obtain illegal protection, obtain tenders, get bills sanctioned, and conceal irregularities regarding work they completed for various tenders they received from the PHED. These allegations form the basis of the money laundering case.
“The suspects were also involved in the purchase of stolen goods from Haryana for using the same in their tenders/contracts and had also submitted fake work completion letters from IRCON to get PHED contracts,” the ED had alleged in an earlier statement.
Aiming to supply households with sufficient and clean drinking water through tap connections, the Center established the Jal Jeevan mission. In Rajasthan, the state PHED was in charge of executing the plan.
