Kolkata Police issues notice to senior ED official in alleged PIL-for-extortion scam – Hindustan Times

The Kolkata Police have sent a notice to a senior official of the Enforcement Directorate in connection with the alleged Public Interest Litigation-for-extortion scam in which the cops have already arrested a Jharkhand-based lawyer.

This comes at a time when the central agency is probing the multi-crore recruitment scam in West Bengal and has arrested the state’s former education minister Partha Chatterjee.

A senior official of the Kolkata Police said that a notice was sent to Subodh Kumar, joint director of the federal agency based in Bhubaneshwar. Kumar was posted in Ranchi between 2016 and 2022. He was transferred to Odisha a few months back.

The city police had arrested Rajiv Kumar, a Jharkhand-based lawyer, allegedly for extorting money from a city-based businessman. Nearly ₹50 lakh cash was seized from him. The accused allegedly used to extort money from people by making them respondents in PILs and threatened them by getting their houses and offices raided by central agencies.

“The accused had filed a PIL in Ranchi high court in 2021 in which a Kolkata-based businessman was made a respondent. He had demanded ₹10 crore from the businessman to strike off his name from the PIL and also threatened that he could get the businessman’s house raided by a central agency. After negotiations he reduced the amount to ₹4 crore and then finally settled at ₹1 crore. He had come to Kolkata to take ₹50 lakh,” said a senior officer of the Kolkata Police’s detective department.

The accused Rajiv Kumar is a practicing lawyer of Jharkhand High Court, with a reputation of filing PILs. He is currently counsel for two PILs filed by Shiv Shankar Sharma against chief minister Hemant Soren seeking a CBI inquiry in connection with his mining lease and alleged shell companies operated by his associates.

He is also the counsellor for petitioner Arun Kumar Dubey related to the MNREGA scam in which the ED has arrested suspended mines secretary Pooja Singhal

The city police recently raided a few places in Ranchi and claimed that the accused has multiple properties, including flats, offices and farmhouses at Ranchi, Noida and Delhi.

“The name of the ED officer surfaced during interrogation and it was found from the accused’s chat history and call log that he had spoken to the official multiple times,” said a Kolkata Police official.

A team of Kolkata Police is expected to reach Bhubaneshwar in Odisha on Tuesday to question Kumar.

Earlier too, the Kolkata Police had summoned three ED officials in connection with an audiotape leak case. The police were probing a case against a businessman, who was heard talking to an ED officer on topics like cattle smuggling and coal scam in a purported audio clip, which was leaked before the 2021 West Bengal Assembly elections.