The Hindu : National : Koda discharged and summoned by Enforcement Directorate

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Koda discharged and summoned by Enforcement Directorate

He will be questioned by the Income Tax department in a money laundering case tomorrow

– Photo: Manob Chowdhury

Former Jharkhand Chief Minister Madhu Koda being discharged from a hospital in Ranchi on Sunday.

RANCHI/ NEW DELHI: Former Jharkhand Chief Minister Madhu Koda was discharged from a hospital on Sunday and will be questioned by the Income Tax department in a money laundering case on Tuesday.

He was also summoned by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to appear before it next Friday. “Fresh summons have been served on Koda to appear before the ED on November 13,” a senior official of the Directorate told PTI.

Ajit Shrivastav, Additional Director (Investigation), met Koda at his home shortly after he was discharged from the hospital.

“He [Koda] requested me to just allow him one day rest and said then we can start out investigation. We can start from day after tomorrow,” Mr. Shrivastav said when asked about the probe in the Rs. 2,000 crore alleged Hawala and illegal investments case.

The sealed room of Koda’s house would be opened during his interrogation, and a “prohibitory order” has placed at his residence, Mr. Shrivastav added.

IT department sources said in New Delhi that Koda will be questioned on the “concealment of income and illegal investments found during their searches.”

A wheel-chair-bound Koda, while leaving a Ranchi hospital after undergoing treatment for five days, told reporters: “I am innocent. I don’t have any connections with anybody.”

According to sources, the ED served fresh summons to Koda as the IT department informed ED officials, after his discharge, about its move to question the former Chief Minister. Authorities were also contemplating issuing arrest warrants against Koda’s associates Binod Kumar Sinha, Sanjay Choudhary and three others in a day or two, as they had not appeared before the investigating agency on November 6. An IT official said: “Several teams are working in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Jamshedpur and other places to gather evidence and stitch them together.”

The task would take time as documents of mines dated back to 2004 when Koda was the Mines Minister under the Arjun Munda government, he said.

In a fresh discovery, IT officials came to know about the transfer of Rs.168 crore in a bank by a non-existent company, the official said.

Hawala transactions

The IT, he added, had requested the ED to move the appropriate authorities to get all the e-mails exchanged during the last three years in connection with the illegal investments and hawala transactions. Earlier in the day, Koda was discharged from a city hospital after the doctors declared him medically fit. He got himself admitted following a stomach ache. — PTI

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