The Enforcement Directorate on Saturday filed a 5500-page charge sheet in the case against former Chief Minister Hemant Soren and the then Deputy Revenue Inspector of Bargain zone, Bhanu Pratap Prasad and other accused. On Saturday, at around 4:30 pm, ED officials reached the PMLA court with documents filled in the box.
In the Ranchi land scam case, ED has made Chief Minister Hemant Soren, Vinod Singh, Revenue Officer Bhanupratap Prasad, Ullasit Kachhap and Rajkumar Pahan accused.
The agency summoned former Chief Minister Hemant Soren 10 times between August 2023 and January 2024 in connection with the alleged purchase and sale of 8.5 acres of land in Badgai area through illegal documents. Soren did not come for questioning 8 times citing different reasons. On the first and second summons, he termed it as motivated by political hatred and warned of legal action. He also went to the Supreme Court and the High Court against the summons, but citing the sections of the PMLA Act, the court refused to grant relief to him. Later, Soren appeared for questioning on the 8th summons on 20 January and again on the 10th summons on 31 January.
Soren was arrested on January 31, 2024 in the land scam case. On 2 February, he was presented in the court from where he was sent to jail for 1 day judicial custody. Later the court gave 13 days remand to ED.
Notably, a lot of drama took place before the arrest of the former Chief Minister. Soren had gone to Delhi on 28 January. On the morning of January 29, ED raided his Delhi residence and Jharkhand Bhawan. Just then, news of Hemant Soren being traceless started emerging. On January 30, in the afternoon, Hemant Soren was seen at the CM residence. On the same day, he held 2 meetings with ruling party MLAs. In this, the name of the successor in case of arrest was discussed.
Earlier there was talk of making Kalpana Soren the CM but due to the opposition of Sita Soren, the elder daughter-in-law of the Soren family, Champai Soren was chosen as the leader of the Grand Alliance. Before being taken into custody on January 31, Hemant Soren submitted his resignation to the Governor.
