The trick in Chhattisgarh's Bharatmala compensation racket, per ED's Raipur zonal office, is exquisite: wait for NHAI to issue Section 3A notification that the land is being acquired — then quickly forge ownership transfers of that very land to your associates, so the same parcel can be compensated again to a brand-new 'owner.' On April 28, ED raided eight premises across Abhanpur, Raipur, Dhamtari and Kurud and walked out with Rs 66.9 lakh in cash and 37.13 kilograms of silver bricks. The colluding 'public servants' have not yet been named.
The Enforcement Directorate's Raipur Zonal Office on April 28 ran PMLA searches at eight premises in Abhanpur, Raipur, Dhamtari and Kurud, in connection with land-acquisition fraud on the Raipur–Visakhapatnam segment of the Bharatmala highway. ED's case rests on a deceptively simple modus operandi: after NHAI issued the Section 3A notification declaring it would acquire the land for the highway, the accused — in 'criminal conspiracy with certain public servants' — allegedly executed fictitious post-notification ownership transfers, so that compensation could be paid out a second time to a freshly minted 'owner.' The agency says it has traced Rs 27.05 crore as proceeds of crime, has provisionally attached Rs 23.35 crore in assets, and on the April 28 raids alone seized Rs 66.9 lakh in cash, 37.13 kg of silver bricks, digital devices and 'incriminating documents.' Bharatmala was sold as a connectivity miracle for landlocked central India; in this stretch of it, the most reliable connection turned out to be the one between the land records office and a printer.