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Guwahati, Feb 2: In a significant turn of events, Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) party leader Champai Soren took oath as the new chief minister of the state at Raj Bhavan in Ranchi on Friday afternoon.
This comes after the former chief minister Hemant Soren was arrested on Wednesday night by the Enforcement Directorate under Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) after he resigned as Jharkhand chief minister.
The allegations of money laundering against the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) leader pertain to the alleged illegal possession of certain immovable assets apart from his purported links with members of the ‘land mafia’.
The investigation is linked to a “huge racket of illegal change of ownership of land by the mafia” in Jharkhand, according to the central probe agency.
The ED has so far arrested 14 people in the case, including 2011-batch IAS officer Chhavi Ranjan who served as the director of the state’s Social Welfare Department and deputy commissioner of Ranchi.
The ED is probing the alleged “huge amounts of proceeds of crime generated by manipulation of official records by showing dummy sellers and purchasers in the guise of forged/ bogus documents to acquire huge parcels of land having value in crores”.