ED arrests Gujarat IAS officer in bribery case

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has arrested Gujarat IAS officer and former Surendranagar district collector Rajendrakumar Patel in connection with a bribery-linked money laundering case, officials aware of the details said on Friday.

Patel was arrested from Gandhinagar on Thursday night and was taken to Surendranagar for investigation, one of the officials cited above said. He was produced before a special PMLA judge at the Ahmedabad district court on Friday, and was granted remand till January 7.

The federal agency had booked Patel, his personal assistant Jayrajsinh Jhala, clerk Mayursinh Gohil and deputy mamlatdar Chandrasinh Mori, days after ED arrested Mori on December 23 for alleged money laundering linked to corruption in land-use permissions and recovered ₹67.50 lakh in cash from his residence during searches.

Following Mori’s arrest, the Gujarat government transferred Patel without posting.

On December 25, the Gujarat Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) registered a corruption case against the four accused.

Last month, ED initiated a probe into alleged corruption in the Surendranagar collectorate following inputs that illegal gratification was being collected for facilitating revenue and land-related permissions and for processing files handled through the collector’s office, officials said.

During searches carried out at multiple locations connected to Mori, the anti-money laundering agency recovered ₹67.5 lakh in cash.Investigators said Mori could not satisfactorily explain the source of the cash and that the amount was disproportionate to his known sources of income. The agency treated the seized cash as proceeds of crime generated through corrupt practices.

During the remand proceedings, the ED submitted that the recovery of cash pointed to a larger arrangement of illegal collections linked to official work carried out from the collectorate, rather than an isolated act by a single official.

The remand note stated that bribes were allegedly demanded and collected as “speed money” for expediting applications, with amounts pre-fixed and calculated on a per-square-metre basis. The agency claimed payments were routed through intermediaries whose details were recorded by the accused.

“It appears that bribes were also taken for routine work by deliberately holding up files that were otherwise moving in the normal course and then demanding money to expedite them. Several such files have been recovered from the collectorate and are under examination. At this stage, it is difficult to assess the full scale of the alleged scam,” said an ACB official aware of the matter.

According to the ED’s remand application filed before the designated special PMLA court in Ahmedabad, bribes were allegedly collected for change of land use permissions, which allow conversion of agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes, in the Surendranagar district collectorate, with rates fixed at ₹5 to ₹10 per square metre and the district collector being the final approving authority.

The agency claimed 50% of the bribes went to then district collector Patel, with records maintained in “hisaab” sheets by his personal assistant Jayrajsinh Zala. More than 800 change of land use applications have been traced, with proceeds of crime estimated at over ₹10 crore.