Bikaner land PMLA case: ED attaches Rs 1.18 cr assets

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has attached assets worth Rs 1.18 crore of government officials and others in connection with its money laundering probe in the Bikaner land deal case.
The agency said it has issued a provisional order attaching the properties of a person identified as Jai Prakash Bagarwa, the then Patwaris of the area Uma Charan Sharma and Mahaveer Swami, the then Nayab Tehsildar Fakir Mohammad "who fraudulently allotted government land on the basis of forged allotment letters in the name of non-existing persons".
The said land in the Kolayat area of Rajasthan's border district of Bikaner was meant for the "allotment of displaced persons" of the army's Mahajan field firing range.

The attached assets include agricultural land, plots, residential buildings, fixed deposits and bank balance of these people.
The ED had registered a criminal case of money laundering in this deal in 2015 taking cognisance of FIRs filed by the state police after the local Tehsildar had made a compliant of alleged forgery.
The agency, in this case, had also issued notices to a firm linked to Rober Vadra, the son-in-law of Congress party president Sonia Gandhi.

However, it has not mentioned the name of Vadra or any company linked to him in its FIR filed under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). In the FIR, it had named some Rajasthan government officials and some of the "land mafia".

Vadra has denied any wrongdoing even as the Congress party had called the action "sheer political vendetta".
"During investigations it was revealed that with a view to grab government land under a criminal conspiracy Ranjit Singh and Jai Prakash stole some blank allotment letters with stamp on them from the colonisation department of Bikaner. Patwaris told Jai Prakash about the khasra number, rakba and village name of government land. The stolen material was used for preparing forged and fabricated allotment letters in the name of the alleged displaced persons of the Mahajan field firing range," the ED said in a statement.

On the basis of these forged allotment letters, it added, "1,422 bighas land was recorded in revenue record in the name of these fictitious allottees without due verification of these allotment letters from the colonisation department. Jai Prakash and others prepared power of attorneys wherein the fictitious allottees appointed Kishore Singh, Ranjeet Singh and Gugangar as power of attorney holder of land authorising them to sell the land on their behalf.
"In this manner they had sold 1,372 bighas of impugned land to various individuals and companies and generated proceeds of crime," the ED said.
The agency said its probe revealed "that illegally-earned tainted money was used for investment in movable and immovable properties by them (the people named in the attachment) in their own names and of their family members".