RANCHI:Jharkhand IAS officer Chhavi Ranjan was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Thursday after a day-long grilling on his involvement in alleged illegal land deals, an official said.
The 2011-batch officer of Jharkhand cadre has been taken into ED custody, he said.
Ranjan, currently serving as director of the state's Social Welfare Department, had reached the office of the probe agency around 10.45 am and was arrested after 10-hours of grilling.
Abhishek Krishna Gupta, his lawyer, who met him told media persons: "I don't have any information of his arrest."
Ranjan's wife also reached at ED regional office here while a medical team from Sadar Hospital has reached for his examination, officials said.
Meanwhile, sources said he will be produced in court tomorrow and ED will seek his remand.
Sources said the investigating officer of the case recorded the statement of the IAS officer under provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
The ED had on April 24, too, questioned Ranjan for about 10 hours in connection with its money laundering investigation into alleged illegal land deals.
Ranjan was briefly questioned by the agency on April 13 as well, when searches were carried out in the case at his premises and those of some others in Jharkhand, Bihar and West Bengal.
The ED has earlier arrested a total of seven people, including a Jharkhand government officer, after these raids.
The central agency is looking at more than a dozen land deals, including one pertaining to defence land, wherein a group, including land mafia, middlemen and bureaucrats, allegedly "connived" in forging deeds and documents from as early as 1932.
Lands of the poor and the downtrodden were "usurped" as part of this fraud, sources had said.
To launch its investigation under the PMLA, the central agency had taken cognisance of a police FIR of forgery of some personal identification documents registered by the civic authorities in Ranchi.
The agency, according to the sources, had recovered a number of fake seals, land deeds and registry documents during the searches.
This is the second case in which a Jharkhand-cadre IAS officer has come under the scanner of the ED. Last year, it had arrested 2000-batch IAS officer Pooja Singhal in a money laundering case.
Singhal was arrested on May 11 last year by the ED in the money laundering case linked to alleged embezzlement of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme funds in Khunti and other suspicious financial transactions.
(With PTI inputs)
