Gujarat IAS officer Rajendrakumar Patel arrested by ED in Surendranagar case

AHMEDABAD: The Enforcement board of directors (ED) has arrested former Surendranagar territorial dominion aggregator Rajendrakumar Patel in connectedness with a bribery-linked money laundering caseful. Patel, an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of the 2015 batch, is the second civil servant to be arrested by ED in this case.Patel, who had been removed as the district collector on December 24 after the arrest of a a deputy mamlatdar, was arrested in Gandhinagar late on Thursday evening and taken to Surendranagar for investigation, said an official aware of the matter.The Enforcement Directorate and the state’s Anti Corruption Bureau recently registered cases against Patel, his personal assistant Jayrajsinh Jhala, clerk Mayursinh Gohil and deputy mamlatdar Chandrasinh Mori after ED seized ₹67.5 lakh in cash from Mori’s residence and arrested him.A native of Ahmedabad, Patel holds a bachelor’s degree in dental surgery and a postgraduate degree in public policy. Before Surendranagar, he served in revenue and district administration roles, handling land, law and order and coordination of government departments at the district level.The case has brought scrutiny on district-level administration, where collectorates play a central role in land conversions, non-agricultural permissions and other revenue-related approvals. As Surendranagar collector, Patel headed the district administration and exercised final authority over land-use and other key revenue decisions processed through the collectorate, officials said.During searches carried out at multiple locations connected to Mori, ED found ₹67.5 lakh in cash. Investigators said at the time that Mori could not satisfactorily explain the source of the cash. ED treated the seized cash as proceeds of crime generated through corrupt practices.At the time, ED concluded 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.ED alleged that the accused collected bribes as “speed money” to expedite applications.“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.The agency alleged that proceeds of crime exceeding ₹1 crore were generated through misuse of official position and that properties acquired from such proceeds are yet to be identified.