ED arrests Afsar Ali in Soren case, gets remand till April 22

The central probe agency on Tuesday arrested Afsar Ali in the money laundering case involving former Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren and 8.66 acre of tribal land behind DAV, Bariatu under Bargain circle, people aware of the development said.

A civil court advocate close to the development said that this is the second time Ali, an expert in making fake land documents, was arrested.

“Earlier Ali was arrested on April 13 last year for making fake documents of army land, which was also being probed by ED. He was arrested after stamps and other materials related to making fake deeds were recovered from his possession. Since that time he has been in jail and today ED brought him from there and presented him before the court in the case related to Soren,” the lawyer said.

Another advocate having an idea of development taking place in PMLA court said this is the fourth arrest in the case related to Hemant Soren.

“In this case, apart from Soren, suspended zonal sub-inspector Bhanu Pratap Prasad, broker Saddam Hussain and Hemant Soren’s architect friend Vinod Singh have been arrested so far. Ali’s specialty is that he can copy anyone’s signature. After the arrest ED moved a petition to take Ali on remand for questioning. The court accepted this application and handed over Ali to the ED till April 22,” the advocate said.

A source close to ED said: “ED arrested Mohammad Saddam and interrogated him for several days. In which many shocking revelations have been made. According to the information, Saddam has confirmed the forgery of 11 such deeds (registry documents) which are said to be from Kolkata. These deeds pertain to plots located in different areas of Ranchi, on the basis of which preparations were made to take possession of the land. Now ED will interrogate Ali by making him sit face to face with Hussain so that more evidence can come to light.”