Ranchi
A special Prevention of Money Laundering Act Court on Saturday allowed former Chief Minister Hemant Soren to participate in the vote of confidence of the Champai Soren dispensation in the Jharkhand Vidhan Sabha on February 5. Hemant’s wife Kalpana Soren too can meet him every day for half an hour while in ED remand, the court ruled.
The court, however, turned down Hemant’s petition that while under ED’s custodial remand he should be allowed to stay at nights at the Camp Jail, a bungalow designated by the JMM-led State government, instead of the Birsa Munda Central Jail due to security reasons and also because of his status as a former Chief Minister.
The Jharkhand High Court will on February 5 take up the hearing on Hemant’s challenge to his arrest by the ED. The HC had adjourned its hearing in view of the Supreme Court having scheduled to take up the matter on the same plea. The SC, however, refused to entertain his plea and asked him to approach the HC.
On the day of voting, the ED will bring Hemant from the Central Jail to the Vidhan Sabha at 11 am and following his participation in the trust vote, the agency will take him back to jail without allowing him to make any statements in the media. He was remanded to ED custody for five days by the court on Friday.
Though the JMM-led ruling alliance has claimed a comfortable majority with the support of 47 MLAs in the 81-member Assembly, nevertheless, it has has shifted its MLAs to Congress-ruled Telangana, where they are lodged in a resort, to “prevent poaching”.
For its part, the ED arrested Bhanu Pratap Prasad, a revenue sub-inspector, under section 19 of PMLA. The agency claimed him to be Hemant Soren’s aide. He has already been arrested in a land scam case. This time arrest has been made in Hemant’s case. The hearing on his remand will be on February 5.
Based on its investigation of phone records and chats, the ED has alleged that the revenue sub-inspector assisted Hemant in acquiring ‘illegal land’. The agency claims Hemant acquired and possessed land parcels of approximately 8.5 acres under the jurisdiction of the revenue sub-inspector. The ED has arrested Hemant in a money laundering case linked to alleged land scam.
“Hemant Soren is knowingly a party with Bhanu Pratap Prasad in the activities connected with concealment of the original records for projecting the property acquired by him in an illegal manner as an untainted property. Further, the process or the activity connected with the acquisition, possession and use of proceeds of crime by projecting it as untainted property is a continuing activity and is continuing as on day as he is still directly enjoying the said proceeds of crime by its possession, occupation and use by claiming it as untainted property,” the ED stated.
Denying the allegations, Hemant said the lands in question in Bargain were “Bhuinhari land,” which cannot be sold or alienated in any manner whatsoever, and that neither he nor his family owned or possessed such land.
