Raipur (Chhattisgarh): The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Saturday arrested IAS officer Ranu Sahu in Chhattisgarh, a day after the central agency conducted raids at her premises in connection with a money laundering case, officials said. "Sahu was arrested in connection with an alleged coal levy case, and produced in a court hearing Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) cases here to seek her custody," ED's lawyer Saurabh Pandey said.
She is the second IAS officer in the state to be arrested in the case. Sahu, a Chhattisgarh-cadre IAS officer of the 2010 batch, is currently posted as the director of the state agriculture department. Prior to this posting, she had served as collector of the coal-rich Korba and Raigarh districts. The ED conducted raids at her residence in Raipur on Friday.
Her premises were raided earlier as well and her assets were attached by the ED as part of its probe into the alleged coal levy case. This is the second IAS officer in the state who has been arrested in the case as Sameer Vishnoi, an IAS officer of the 2009 batch, was arrested last year. The agency has been probing an alleged coal levy and liquor scam in the state in which it has arrested some prominent bureaucrats, apart from politicians and those linked to them.
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Coal levy case was a massive scam in which illegal levy of Rs 25 was being extorted for every tonne of coal transported in Chhattisgarh by a cartel involving senior bureaucrats, businessmen, politicians and middlemen.
