Harak Singh Rawat, a Congress leader and former Uttarakhand minister, and his daughter-in-law have been summoned by the Enforcement Directorate for questioning in connection with a money laundering probe, official sources said on Friday, news agency PTI reported. According to sources, Rawat has been summoned to appear before the federal agency on February 29 and his daughter-in-law Anukriti on March 7, respectively. On February 7, the agency raided Rawat's and others' premises.
During the searches, it recovered around Rs 1.20 crore in Indian and international currency notes, as well as gold and "voluminous" papers.
A day later, the federal agency released an official statement that was silent regarding where the recovered items came from.
The ED is investigating Birendra Singh Kandari, a "close associate" of Rawat, Indian Forest Service (IFoS) official and former DFO Kishan Chand, and former forest range officer Brij Bihari Sharma.
Rawat, 63, is a former forest minister in the state who left the BJP before of the 2022 Uttarakhand assembly elections to join the Congress party.
The ED stated that their probe into these individuals arose from two separate FIRs filed in the state.
One of the FIRs was filed by the Uttarakhand Police against Kandari and others.
According to the agency, Kandari and Narendra Kumar Walia created a "criminal conspiracy" with Rawat and obtained two powers of attorney for a land for which the sale deed had been annulled by the court.
They unlawfully transferred this land to Rawat's wife Deepti Rawat and Laxmi Singh, who built the Doon Institute of Medical Science in Dehradun under the Shrimati Poorna Devi Memorial Trust, according to the cental probe agency.
The state government's vigilance department filed a second FIR against Sharma, Chand, and others under different provisions of the IPC, Forest Conservation Act, Wildlife (Protection) Act, and Prevention of Corruption Act.
The ED claimed that Kishan Chand, the then divisional forest officer (DFO), and Sharma, the forest ranger at the time, conspired with other bureaucrats and Rawat to publish a tender for a higher amount than the authorised financial powers, and that the tender was also not in accordance with the state government's rules/guidelines.
They also "fabricated" papers and "misused" monies under the titles of Tiger Conservation Foundation and Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA), resulting in a wrongful loss worth crores of rupees to the Uttarakhand government, it said.
They are also accused of illegally cutting over 6,000 trees despite the fact that just 163 trees had been authorized, according to the ED.
Chand and Sharma were suspended due to alleged violations in the forest department. Chand was detained in Delhi in December 2022, and in April 2023, the high court granted him conditional release.