ED attaches Rs 6-cr worth assets in case against former Guj IAS officer, others

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) Tuesday said it has attached assets worth about Rs 6 crore as part of a money laundering investigation against former Gujarat IAS officer Pradeep Sharma and some others.

A provisional order was issued on April 25 under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) to attach plots located in Bhuj and Kutch in Gujarat, the federal probe agency said in a statement.

The money laundering case stems from a Gujarat Police crime branch (Bhuj) FIR against Sharma and a person named Sanjay Shah, apart from some others, on charges of cheating and criminal breach of trust.

Sharma, in connivance with other revenue officials, was involved in cheating and illegal allotment of valuable government land by leveraging his position as the district collector of Bhuj, Gujarat, the ED alleged.

He "disregarded" various government resolutions and allotted the land illegally to Shah, causing an undue loss to the Gujarat government, it said.

Shah later developed the land into residential plots and generated proceeds of crime. The attached assets are worth Rs 5.92 crore, according to the ED.