Following cash trail of sand barons, ED sleuths reach the doorstep of Kamalalayam staff

CHENNAI: Officers from Enforcement Directorate on Tuesday, following the lead from last fortnight raids against sand mafia, landed at the doorstep of one Jothi Kumar, an office staff of state BJP headquarters – Kamalalayam. The ED officials had to do quick retreating when they came to know his job profile, sources said here.

The ED sleuths were trailing cash payout details and reached the house located on Saravana street in T Nagar. Jothi Kumar is said to be a tenant of the house belonging to one Shanmugham, a realtor.

Sources said that a search was later carried out in the house of Shanmugham. Sources added that both were interrogated based on the evidence of large scale cash transfer to them from the sand mining barons, whose properties were searched two weeks ago.

There is no official clarification from ED if they were tracking the transfer of cash to Jothi Kumar or Shanmugam, sources said that both were interrogated.

However, the interrogation of Kamalalayam staff was over in less than 30 minutes.

Sources said that Jothi Kumar has been working as an accountant at Kamalalayam for about 15 years. It may be recalled that ED searched 34 places including 8 mining yards that belong to sand mining contractors K Rathinam, S Ramachandran and Karikalan in six districts on September 12. ED also searched auditor Shanmugaraj's premises as well as the Water Resources Department headquarters.

Then ED said that they had seized incriminating documents including diaries, bogus fake sale receipts with counterfeit QR code besides freezing Rs 12.82 crore unaccounted cash along with 1 kg gold.