Day after arrest, Jharkhand govt suspends mines secretary Pooja Singhal

RANCHI: Puja Singhal, a 2000 batch IAS officer and secretary (mines and industries departments) in the Hemant Soren government, was arrested by the enforcement directorate (ED) on Wednesday evening after more than 20 hours of questioning in connection with the alleged embezzlement of MGNREGA funds to the tune of Rs 18 crore between 2006 and 2010, when she was the deputy commissioner in Khunti.
The arrest, a first in case of a serving IAS officer in the state, assumes significance given the important departments that she was heading, with chief minister Hemant Soren being in-charge of most of them, and who himself is in the eye of the storm following the Election Commission notice related to the allotment of mining lease in his favour.
ED officials also interrogated Singhal's husband Abhishek Jha, a businessman, for the second day on Wednesday. Earlier, Singhal's close aide Suman Kumar, a chartered accountant working for her husband, was arrested on May 7 following raids at 20 locations all over the country. ED sleuths had recovered Rs 17.60 crore in cash from his house.
The ED, which arrested Singhal under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, was granted five-day remand by a special court, beginning Thursday, instead of the 12 days the agency had sought.
Earlier in the day, the ED summoned a medical team from Sadar hospital for mandatory health check-up of the IAS officer before taking her into custody.
IAS officer's arrest adds to frayed nerves of JMM, BJP
Political tribulations in Jharkhand are all set to further escalate with the Enforcement Directorate arresting senior woman IAS officer Puja Singhal, heading two key departments - mines and geology and industries in the state government. None other than chief minister Hemant Soren is the minister in charge for both these departments.
Politicking has been continuing around the ED action since the day initial raids were conducted at 20 locations all over the country, related to Singhal and her aides on May 6.
Though the raids were linked to MNREGA fund embezzlement, BJP MP Nishikant Dubey broke the news of ED raids on Puja Singhal early in the morning describing her as CM's blue-eyed baby and the officer responsible for allocating mines to CM and his close aides at throwaway prices.
BJP leaders in the state tried to insinuate that the raids were linked to mine allocation, a matter in which chief minister Hemant Soren was served a showcause notice by the Election Commission a few days ago.
While the ED action on the bureaucrat was initially described by the CM as an act of the central agency under political pressure of the BJP government, he changed stance the next day when JMM revealed that it was the former BJP government in state, under Raghubar Das that had given clean chit to the wrongdoings of Singhal in 2017.
BJP, which was trying to portray that the raids on mining secretary has links with mine allotment, was in a Catch-22 situation.Party president Deepak Prakash had to admit that if Singhal's wrongdoings were overlooked by anyone in the past, it must be probed. Answering media questions about Raghubar Das's government absolving the IAS officer of all charges, Prakash said, "Even that should be probed."
Understanding well that arresting an IAS officer in a 10-year-old case and conducting raids at a time when Soren has been served with a showcause by the ECI to prove his innocence in the matter of office of profit, linked to mine allocation, JMM is uneasy with the developments.
"ED was trying to put words in the mouth of CA Suman Kumar to implicate CM and his close aides," JMM central general secretary Supriyo Bhattacharya had said but on Wednesday he refused to describe arrest of the IAS officer as " politically motivated".
"We will talk about the arrests tomorrow," he said, adding that the central agency is doing its work.