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Chennai: The Tamil Nadu’s anti-corruption wing, the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC) on Friday raided the office of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in Madurai district a few hours after it arrested an officer of the federal agency, Ankit Tiwari in a bribery case.
“Ankit Tiwari, an Enforcement Officer was caught red handed while accepting a bribe of ₹20 lakh from a doctor in Dindigul,” a senior Tamil Nadu police official said, asking not to be named. “He, along with his team of ED officers has been threatening several people and receiving bribes in return for closing their case in ED.”
HT reached out to ED for a response but did not get one immediately.
Tiwari’s car was stopped along the Dindigul-Madurai highway around 9 am after he collected the bribe, a second official who also did not wish to be named said. It is rare for the state police to arrest an official of the central government. The arrest was based on a tio-off, the second official added.
DVAC officials first sought to verify whether Tiwari was an impostor or indeed an ED officer. At the time of writing, DVAC did not confirm his credentials but the state police produced Tiwari’s ID card , valid up to December 2024.
A senior police officer in Dindigul district said that they assisted DVAC’s Madurai branch.On Friday evening, DVAC sleuths drove into the sub-zonal office of ED in Madurai.
DVAC’s raid comes even as Tamil Nadu’s DMK government has charged that the BJP-led Union government is using ED and the Income Tax department to “harass” its officials and elected representatives ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
ED had earlier arrested minister V Senthil Balaji on June 14 on charges of money laundering in a case dating back to 2014. In July, the agency questioned higher education minister K Ponmudi and his son Gautham Sigamani, a parliamentarian in a sand mining case.
On Tuesday, the Madras high court stayed the summons issued by ED to five IAS officers who are district collectors in Tamil Nadu. ED summoned them in a sand mining case but the state on behalf of the collectors contested this, saying that the Union government is using ED as an instrument to undermine and usurp the powers of states which are not ruled by the BJP. The state had asked for the summons to be quashed on the grounds that it is without jurisdiction, unreasonable and in violation of both the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) 2002 and the Constitution.
Divya Chandrababu is an award-winning political and human rights journalist based in Chennai, India. Divya is presently Assistant Editor of the Hindustan Times where she covers Tamil Nadu & Puducherry. She started her career as a broadcast journalist at NDTV-Hindu where she anchored and wrote prime time news bulletins. Later, she covered politics, development, mental health, child and disability rights for The Times of India. Divya has been a journalism fellow for several programs including the Asia Journalism Fellowship at Singapore and the KAS Media Asia- The Caravan for narrative journalism. Divya has a master’s in politics and international studies from the University of Warwick, UK. As an independent journalist Divya has written for Indian and foreign publications on domestic and international affairs.
After officer’s arrest, police raids ED office in Madurai – Hindustan Times
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