ED arrests Bihar cadre IAS officer and former RJD MLA in money laundering case

Patna: In relation to a money-laundering case, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Friday detained former RJD MLA Gulab Yadav and IAS officer Sanjeev Hans, a Bihar cadre.

According to news agency PTI, the CBI detained Yadav in Delhi under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), while Hans was caught from Patna.

Yadav was a lawmaker for the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) before Hans, an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) official from the 1997 batch, became the senior secretary of the Bihar energy department. He served as the Madhubani district’s representative for the Jhanjharpur Assembly seat from 2015 until 2020.

According to reports, Hans engaged in unethical behavior while holding these important positions, including stealing substantial amounts of money and demanding expensive automobiles as bribes.

The Special Vigilance Unit (SVU) of the Bihar Police filed a FIR against Hans and Yadav last month on allegations of corruption and accused ownership of excessive assets, which led to the filing of a money-laundering case against the two.

A group of SVU representatives is reviewing the data that the central investigation agency has submitted. A top officer informed PTI that the FIR names around 14 persons as suspects, including Hans, Yadav, and their families.

As part of a money laundering inquiry, the investigative agency searched over 20 places in Patna, Madhubani, Pune, Delhi, Amritsar, and Chandigarh earlier in July. From Hans’s premises, fifteen watches—including high-end models like Rado and Rolex—as well as over one hundred grams of gold jewelry were taken. Additionally, damning papers detailing payments for corruption were discovered and confiscated.