A day after recovering unaccounted cash of over ₹35 crore from a flat in Ranchi, the Enforcement Directorate on Tuesday arrested Jharkhand Minister Alamgir Alam’s private secretary Sanjeev Kumar Lal and his house help Jahangir Alam in a Prevention of Money Laundering (PMLA) case.

Loads of cash stuffed into trunks were ferried away by the ED officials on Monday after multiple currency counting machines were used to arrive at the volume of unaccounted cash in the ₹500 denomination.

The total seizure of cash by the ED was around ₹36.75 crore, with the sleuths recovering about ₹3 crore from other locations including ₹10.05 lakh from Lal’s premise. Another ₹1.50 crore were seized from a contractor’s premises on Tuesday.

Distancing himself from Lal, Minister Alam told reporters on Monday in Ranchi that his PS had earlier served with other Ministers of the State government too, possibly hinting that the cash could belong to someone else.

To seek the custody of Lal and Jahangir Alam for interrogation, the ED told the trial court, “It is ascertained that Sanjeev Lal takes care of the collection of commission on behalf of some influential persons and plays a pivotal role in managing the tenders and collection of commission from engineers. The commission is distributed in a mechanised manner to higher-ups of the government.”

The agency also stated that names of “senior bureaucrats and politicians” have emerged in the case and this is being investigated.

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