Chaitanya Baghel, son of former Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel, allegedly received Rs 200 crore to Rs 250 crore from a massive liquor syndicate during the Congress regime, Chhattisgarh’s Anti-Corruption Bureau/Economic Offences Wing (ACB/EOW) charged in its latest filing.
The seventh supplementary chargesheet, a hefty 3,800-page document submitted Monday to a special court, paints Chaitanya as the linchpin in building, running, and shielding the extortion racket within the excise department from 2018 to 2023. This brings the total to eight chargesheets in the scam, now estimated at over Rs 3,000 crore, with probes hinting at Rs 3,500 crore or more in illicit gains.
Investigators claim Chaitanya orchestrated operations, linking top officials like Anil Tuteja, Soumya Chaurasia, Arunpati Tripathi, and Niranjan Das with foot soldiers including Anwar Dhebar, Arvind Singh, and Vikas Agarwal. He funneled scam proceeds through associates, routing his cut via liquor baron Trilok Singh Dhillon’s firms into family businesses and real estate ventures. Funds also flowed through banks to relatives, friends, and proxies.
“Evidence indicates that Chaitanya, along with managing the proceeds of the crime at a higher level, received around Rs 200 crore-Rs 250 crore as his share,” the ACB/EOW stated. High-level cover, policy tweaks, and administrative muscle from Chaitanya kept the syndicate humming for years, they added.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED), chasing money laundering leads, arrested Chaitanya on July 18 after raiding his Bhilai home shared with his father. Their earlier chargesheet pegged him as handling over Rs 1,000 crore in dirty money from liquor sales between 2019 and 2022, cash skimmed from every bottle, causing huge losses to the state coffers.
ACB/EOW arrested him in September while he sat in judicial custody. The ED has also collared former excise minister Kawasi Lakhma, Dhebar (brother of ex-Raipur Mayor Aijaz Dhebar), ex-IAS officer Tuteja, ITS officer Tripathi, and others. The FIR, filed January 17, 2024, lists 70 names including Lakhma and ex-chief secretary Vivek Dhand.
Post-arrest, Bhupesh Baghel cried political vendetta, blaming Congress efforts to curb deforestation and mining. He accused probe agencies of targeting opposition leaders.
