Who Is Pooja Singhal? ED Raids Places Linked To Jharkhand Mining Secretary

Who is Pooja Singhal? The government of Jharkhand suspended the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer Pooja Singhal after she was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate on Wednesday. The arrest was made in connection with her involvement in a money laundering case. This suspension comes a day after the Jharkhand CM Hemant Soren promised legal actions against her.

The raids were conducted by the Enforcement Directorate on Friday at 18 locations in four states, they also searched premises linked to  Singhal. She is currently the Jharkhand Mining Secretary. The raids were part of the probe of the money laundering case which involves the diversion of public funds for private individual's benefits.

This raid by ED was conducted in Jharkhand, Bihar, West Bengal and Punjab. In the course of the raid, they discovered documents with regards to properties and assets linked to Singhal, which includes a multi-speciality hospital in Ranchi. Singhal's husband Abhishek Jha is the managing director of Pulse Sanjeevani Healthcare Private Hospital.

The probe is based on a case which was an FIR registered five years ago by the Anti-Corruption Bureau against a junior engineer named Ram Binod Prasad Sinha. But the raids come at a time when the Chief Minister of Jharkhand Hemant Soren is already facing corruption charges for alleged allocation of a mining lease in his favour and giving a plot of land to his wife Kalpana Soren.

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Sinha has allegedly embezzled public money amounting to Rs 18.06 crores between 2008 and 2011. In a statement by him, he alleged that he used to pay five percent of the cost of an MNREGA project as a commission to his superiors in the engineering section and to the administrative side, which was Deputy Commissioner (DC's) office in Khunti. At that time Singhal was the acting DC of the district and no action was taken against Sinha.

Who Is Pooja Singhal?

Singhal is from the 2000-batch of Jharkhand cadre IAS officers. Over the period of time in her career, she has held power positions in various sections and under different governments. In the past, she has been the agriculture secretary under the Bharatiya Janata Party government and has been the tourism and industries secretary under the current Jharkhand state government.

This is not Singhalcourted controversy. When she was the Deputy Commissioner of Palamu, she was accused of transferring at least 83 acres of land to a private company for mining purposes.