Bail petitions of suspended Jharkhand IAS officers Pooja Singhal, Chhavi Ranjan rejected again

Ranchi: Suspended IAS officers — Pooja Singhal and Chhavi Ranjan, both currently in jail on separate money laundering charges in Jharkhand, faced legal setbacks on Friday as their bail petitions were rejected by different courts.

Former Ranchi Deputy Commissioner Chhavi Ranjan, who is accused of involvement in a scam related to Army land in Ranchi, had filed a bail petition in the Supreme Court.

However, the Bench comprising Justice Bela M. Trivedi and Justice H.C. Sharma on Friday rejected his plea. Earlier, the Jharkhand High Court had also rejected his petition.

Chhavi Ranjan was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on April 5, 2023 and faces two cases of money laundering.

Although the Jharkhand High Court granted him bail in one case involving the fraudulent sale and purchase of one acre of land on Cheshire Home Road, Ranchi, he remains in jail due to his involvement in another case.

The second case pertains to the alleged manipulation of approximately four-and-a-half-acres of land in Bariatu, occupied by the Indian Army.

In a separate development, the PMLA court in Ranchi on Friday rejected the bail plea of another suspended IAS officer Pooja Singhal. She was arrested by the ED on May 11, 2022 in a money laundering case linked to the MNREGA scam in Khunti, Jharkhand.

The ED has also filed a charge sheet against seven individuals, including Singhal. The charge sheet revealed that Rs. 1.43 crore, well beyond her official salary, was found in her bank account during her tenure as DC of Khunti, Chatra, and Palamu.

The MNREGA scam occurred between 2009 and July 2010, when she was the DC in Khunti, Chatra and Palamu.

Following an ED raid, Rs 20 crore in cash was recovered from the residence of her husband Abhishek Jha’s CA, Suman Kumar.

Singhal, suspended by the Jharkhand government following the arrest, was briefly granted bail for a few days for her daughter’s treatment, but was later ordered to surrender.

She returned to judicial custody on April 12, 2023 and since then remains in Birsa Munda Central Jail, Ranchi.

Despite multiple bail petitions in the High Court and the Supreme Court, she has received no further relief.

–IANS