ED files charge sheet in sand smuggling case in West Bengal
Kolkata: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has filed a charge sheet in the sand smuggling case, the central agency sources said on Saturday.
The ED filed the charge sheet within 60 days of the arrest of Arun Sharaf and other accused, ED officials said.
The charge sheet was submitted on Saturday to ED’s special court in Bankshall court premises against a total of 14 companies.
The ED claimed that a corruption of Rs 145 crore has taken place.
The investigating agency also claimed that this money was allegedly laundered through 14 companies, including GD Mining, ED officials added.
Arun Sharaf, the owner of GD Mining, was arrested by the ED on November 6 last year.
The ED alleged that Arun Sharaf committed every possible type of fraud.
It is alleged that Arun Sharaf completely disregarded all the rules and regulations of the West Bengal Sand (Mining, Transport, Storage and Sale) or WBMDTCL and amassed huge profits through illegal sand mining and sales.
The central investigation agency sleuths claimed that the license plate number of the truck authorised to transport sand had to be provided.
However, it is alleged that the same number was used for multiple trucks involved in this sand smuggling operation.
In many cases, this went unnoticed by the state authorities.
Superficially, it would appear that the sand was being transported by the authorised truck.
However, in reality, multiple trucks were being used with the same license plate number to carry out this sand corruption.
The sand transport permits included a QR code.
It is alleged that this QR code was also forged.
The ED investigation revealed that forged/invalid challans were being used for illegal transportation of stolen sand from river/stock points.
The accused persons/entities used to move the stolen sand illegally from the stock points that have been obtained through allotted or auctioned mines/stock points.
Investigation has also revealed that illegal cash generated through aforesaid activities has been merged into the regular books of accounts by unexplained cash deposits.
The ED finally filed a charge sheet after investigating this case.
