SC grants bail to former Ranchi DC Chhavi Ranjan in money laundering case

RANCHI: The Supreme Court on Friday granted conditional bail to former Ranchi Deputy Commissioner (DC) Chhavi Ranjan in a money laundering case linked to a land scam. He was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on May 4, 2023, and has been in judicial custody since then. Chhavi Ranjan, a 2011 batch IAS officer, has served as the Deputy Commissioner of Ranchi and was posted at the Department of Social Welfare when he was arrested by the ED. The bail plea was heard in the Supreme Court by the Bench of Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi. Accused of fraudulent sale-purchase of land in Ranchi, Ranjan had approached the Supreme Court after the Jharkhand High Court rejected his bail plea on August 6 this year. Earlier, the Ranchi PMLA (Prevention of Money Laundering Act) court had also refused to grant bail to Chhavi Ranjan, prompting him to move the High Court seeking relief. The case involves the fraudulent purchase and sale of land located in Bariatu under the Bargai circle in Ranchi, which was under the possession of the Army. Ranjan was Deputy Commissioner of Ranchi from July 15, 2020, to July 11, 2022. Notably, the Enforcement Directorate had conducted raids on April 13 on 21 locations linked to Chhavi Ranjan spread across Jharkhand, Bihar and West Bengal and had unearthed a huge land scam by a gang of scamsters having expertise in preparing fake documents, falsifying and forging original documents in Ranchi. Ranjan was the Deputy Commissioner of Ranchi when a stone mining lease was granted to Chief Minister Hemant Soren for stone mining at Angara in the outskirts of Ranchi. Apart from former Deputy Commissioner and IAS officer Chhavi Ranjan, the ED has also named prominent businessman Vishnu Agrawal, revenue sub-inspector of Bargai circle Bhanu Pratap Prasad, Pradeep Bagchi, land dealers Afsar Ali, Imtiaz Khan, Talha Khan, Faiyaz Khan, Mohammad Saddam, Amit Agrawal, and Dilip Ghosh as accused in the case.