Another ex-IAS officer arrested in Jharkhand liquor ‘scam’ case

He is the second IAS officer to be arrested in the case after former principal secretary and ex-JSBCL Managing Director Vinay Kumar Choubey.

This comes after the ACB had arrested Vinay Kumar Choubey and Joint Commissioner of Excise Gajendra Singh on May 20 after the agency registered an FIR alleging irregularities in awarding contracts to placement agencies using fake bank guarantees.

The FIR claims that the exchequer suffered a loss of Rs 38 crore due to the alleged fraud.

According to the ACB, Prakash, as excise commissioner, had the authority to encash bank guarantees from placement agencies to recover dues for JSBCL but took no action. He was allegedly evasive during questioning.

On May 21 – a day after Choubey’s arrest — three others, JSBCL’s former General Manager (Finance) Sudhir Kumar Das, former GM (Finance and Operations) Sudhir Kumar, and Neeraj Kumar Singh, a local representative of the placement agency Marshan, were arrested in the case.

According to the ACB, in November 2024, Prakash authorised payments of over Rs 11 crore to two liquor supply companies from Chhattisgarh Dishita Ventures and Om Sai Beverages without informing the excise minister. The payments, for dues pending since 2022, were allegedly made despite four Chhattisgarh-based placement agencies – which ACB claims are part of the same syndicate — being blacklisted and owing nearly Rs 450 crore to the Jharkhand government.

The state has approached the Supreme Court to recover the amount.

The ACB claims these payments were cleared just a month before Prakash’s retirement.

DGP Anurag Gupta – chief of the Jharkhand ACB – did not respond to calls and texts for a comment.

Meanwhile, the Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has demanded the CBI’s intervention in the matter, claiming that they warned the public and the state government about the scam in 2022.