Chhattisgarh ex-CM Baghel’s son Chaitanya, already in jail, held again in liquor scam

On Wednesday, Chaitanya and one Dipendra Chavda were arrested and produced before a special ACB court in Raipur that sent them to EOW/ACB custody until October 6.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) is probing the money laundering aspect of the scam, while the EOW/ACB is looking into the criminal aspect and had registered an FIR in 2024 for cheating, forgery and criminal conspiracy. The state agency has pegged the worth of the scam at Rs 3,200 crore.

Earlier this month, the ED filed a prosecution complaint against Chaitanya in a special PMLA court alleging that he “personally handled around Rs 1,000 crore generated from the liquor scam”.

An EOW official, requesting anonymity, said, “Chaitanya’s name cropped up in our investigations around six months ago. We arrested him after his petitions for anticipatory bail were rejected multiple times.”

After the arrest, Chaitanya’s lawyer Faisal Rizvi said the arrest had been made without any evidence just to create pressure.

“After the Chhattisgarh High Court rejected the anticipatory bail plea of Chaitanya, he was arrested by the ACB/EOW. The basis of arrest put before the special court by EOW is the statement of one of the accused in the case, Laxmi Narayan Bansal, related to Rs 1,000 crore (proceeds of crime). The key fact is that Chaitanya’s name has not been mentioned in any of the charge sheets,” the lawyer said.

According to the ED, the alleged liquor scam took place between 2019 and 2022 during the Congress rule in Chhattisgarh.

The ED alleged a syndicate of senior state bureaucrats, politicians, and excise officials allegedly ran a “parallel excise department”, wherein liquor was sold to the public but no money came to the exchequer causing a loss of Rs 2,161 crore.

Chavda is accused of helping in transporting the money (proceeds of crime) from one accused to another.