RAIPUR: In response to the petition filed by local businessman Nikhil Chandrakar, ED has denied the allegations and called them baseless.
Nikhil Chandrakar had filed a petition in the court alleging that ED has been pressurizing him during the interrogation to utter the names of some people in the case to frame charges against them. He complained that he was mentally tortured by the agency officials during the interrogation and was kept him under custody for more than a day illegally.
“I was also asked about the political people sitting in the top position in the government with whom I was not aware… I was threatened a lot… I was pressured to say that I paid off a man at the Congress office,” the complaint filed by Chandrakar with Telibandha police station claimed.
The ED in their affidavit in November had claimed that Chandrakar was one of the close aides of the kingpin of the alleged scam, Suryakant Tiwari. He was called for questioning by ED on December 23.
It claimed that Tiwari was able to pressurise various officers to do illegal acts by using Chhattisgarh chief minister’s deputy secretary Saumya Chaurasia’s name.
IAS officer Sameer Vishnoi, businessman Sunil Agrawal, Laxmikant Tiwari, and kingpin Suryakant Tiwari were arrested in October last year, on charges of involvement in a nexus of govt officials who collected illegal levy of Rs 24 per tonne of coal which was transported from mines in Chhattisgarh.