A special court has sent former Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers Alok Shukla and Anil Tuteja into the Enforcement Directorate's (ED) custody for four weeks in a money laundering case linked to the alleged Nagrik Apurti Nigam (NAN) scam.
The two officials surrendered before the court of Special Judge Damarudhar Chouhan on Monday, following which they were formally arrested by the ED. This move comes after the Supreme Court last week set aside their anticipatory bail and allowed the ED to take them into custody for a period of four weeks. Anil Tuteja, who was already in judicial custody in a separate ₹2,000 crore liquor scam case, was brought to the court on a production warrant for his surrender in the NAN case.
The alleged NAN scam was first exposed in February 2015 during the then Bharatiya Janata Party government's tenure. Raids conducted by the state's Economic Offences Wing and Anti-Corruption Bureau on 25 premises of the Civil Supplies Corporation, the nodal agency for the Public Distribution System, led to the seizure of ₹3.64 crore in unaccounted cash. Investigators also found that samples of rice and salt were sub-standard and unfit for human consumption. At the time of the alleged scam, Alok Shukla served as the chairman of the NAN, while Anil Tuteja was its managing director.
The ED's lawyer Saurabh Kumar Pande told reporters that the two officers will be taken to Delhi for interrogation. Their four-week custody period began on September 19, and they are scheduled to be produced in court again on October 16.
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