What happened
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.