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All individuals named in this article are publicly identified accused in verified FIRs, ED press statements, or court proceedings. All figures and legal references are sourced from Enforcement Directorate press releases, The Week, Lagatar24, ProKerala/IANS, IBC World News, The Researchers, and Lawyers Club India, cited inline.
Ranchi | March 2026
In September 2025, Enforcement Directorate teams fanned out across nine locations in Ranchi and Delhi simultaneously. They were looking for paper, mostly. Revenue records, sale deeds, mutation certificates, genealogy documents. The kind of paperwork that, in Jharkhand, determines who owns land and who does not. What they found at those nine locations, including Kanke Resort, properties in Kadru, Ashok Nagar, and Sukhdev Nagar in Ranchi, and three addresses in Delhi, was evidence of what investigators described as a systematic operation to convert legally protected tribal land into “general plots” through forged documents, and then sell it at prices that bore no relationship to the official records filed with the government.
The main accused, Kamlesh Kumar Singh, had already been arrested by the ED on July 26, 2024. A prosecution complaint had been filed against him and five others before the Special Court under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act in Ranchi. A separate accused, land broker Afsar Ali, was found by investigators to have sold approximately 150 acres of land across different areas of Ranchi using fabricated documents, with what the ED described as the full cooperation of senior government officers. The September 2025 raids were not the beginning of this case. They were one chapter in an investigation that had been running for years, growing steadily larger with each arrest and each set of documents seized.
This is one thread of a land crisis in Jharkhand that runs deeper and older than any single case file.
Jharkhand sits on land that has been formally protected for tribal communities since 1908, when the British colonial administration enacted the Chotanagpur Tenancy Act in response to decades of exploitation by moneylenders, zamindars, and outside settlers who had been systematically dispossessing the indigenous population of the plateau. The CNT Act, as it has been known ever since, established a fundamental restriction: tribal land cannot be sold, gifted, or transferred to a non-tribal person without the prior permission of the Deputy Commissioner of the district. Section 46 of the Act governs tribal-to-tribal transfers, requiring the DC’s consent even within the community. Section 71A goes further, giving the DC the authority to evict a non-tribal buyer who has acquired tribal land in violation of the Act and restore possession to the original tribal owner. The Santhal Parganas Tenancy Act of 1949 applies the same framework to the Santhal region in the northeast of the state. Together, these two Acts cover the majority of Jharkhand’s land area and are among the strongest statutory protections for indigenous land rights in the country.
The Supreme Court has confirmed what the Acts say plainly: land belonging to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes cannot be purchased by non-SC/ST individuals. This prohibition extends to OBC buyers, general category buyers, companies, and any other entity outside the protected communities. A tribal person may buy land from a non-tribal but may not sell to one. The protections run in one direction and were designed that way deliberately. History had demonstrated what happened when they did not exist.
What history has also demonstrated, over the century since the CNT Act was enacted, is that law and implementation are not the same thing. A petition filed before the Supreme Court, reported by The Print in June 2022, stated that while the laws on paper were unambiguous, approximately 70 percent of protected land in Jharkhand had been transferred illegally and was currently being occupied by people in violation of the Acts. The petitioner, Shyam Prasad Sinha, a Jharkhand resident, argued that the sheer scale of illegal occupation had made the Acts functionally meaningless in large parts of the state. Whether his proposed remedy, abolition of the Acts, is the right one is a separate debate. His factual description of how widely the law was being violated was not seriously contested.
The mechanism of that violation has become well documented through ED investigations. It does not involve open defiance of the law. It involves the documents that prove what the law requires. Revenue records, inheritance chains, sale deed registries, genealogy entries, all of which are maintained by Circle Officers, sub-registrar offices, and district revenue departments. When those officials are complicit, the records can be altered. A tribal plot can be reclassified in the revenue register as a general plot. A fake raiyat can be inserted into an inheritance chain. A sale deed can be registered using names and addresses that correspond to no living person. The original paper records, in some cases, were physically removed from government registers and destroyed, replaced with fabricated versions that created a clean paper trail for land that had been stolen.
The ED’s investigation into the Ranchi land scam, which became public in 2022 and widened significantly through 2023, 2024, and 2025, documented this apparatus in detail. Among the named accused in prosecution complaints filed before the PMLA Special Court in Ranchi are Chhavi Ranjan, the former Deputy Commissioner of Ranchi, arrested on charges under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act; Bhanu Pratap Prasad, the Revenue Deputy Inspector of the Badgai region in Ranchi, arrested after a raid on his premises yielded government documents along with materials on his mobile phone; land broker Afsar Ali, identified as the person who prepared fake documents for approximately 150 acres of transactions across Ranchi; and businessman Amit Kumar Agarwal, director of Jagatbandhu Tea Estates Private Limited, one of the entities that purchased land through the fraudulent chain. The accused also include Pradeep Bagchi, described in ED documents as a fake raiyat of army-occupied land, and multiple land brokers identified by name in the ED’s investigation reports. (Sources: Lagatar24, July 20, 2023; Lawyers Club India, February 5, 2024; The Week, January 31, 2024)
The defence land dimension of the case is particularly striking. The ED charge sheet documents the fraudulent acquisition of 4.55 acres of defence land in Ranchi, accomplished through a fake deed arranged by Afsar Ali. The same methods were applied to a 7.16-acre parcel at Hehal, where original deeds were physically altered and the land was then sold. These were not village plots in a remote district. They were defence-classified land parcels in a state capital, transferred using records that, in some instances, were fabricated to appear to date back to 1932. The ED’s forensic work established that the original entries in government registers had been replaced with forged documents designed to pre-date the protective legislation entirely. (Source: The Week, January 31, 2024; Lawyers Club India, February 5, 2024)
By January 2024, 14 individuals had been arrested in the Ranchi land scam case. Three plots in Ranchi, estimated at over Rs 161 crore in current market value, had been attached by the ED in September 2023 alone. The agency had conducted more than 40 searches and five surveys in connection with the case. It had also sent the Jharkhand government five separate recommendations under Section 66 of the PMLA to register FIRs against named individuals, recommendations that went unanswered for extended periods, which prompted the ED to file a 140-page writ petition in the Jharkhand High Court detailing the government’s alleged inaction. (Sources: OpIndia, November 11, 2024; Lagatar24, July 20, 2023)
The investigation’s most consequential turn came on January 31, 2024, when the ED arrested Hemant Soren, then the sitting Chief Minister of Jharkhand, in connection with land scam proceedings. The ED alleged that Soren was in illegal possession and occupation of more than a dozen land parcels, totalling approximately 8.5 acres, described in enforcement documents as the proceeds of crime under the PMLA. Soren had skipped seven previous ED summons. He submitted his resignation as Chief Minister shortly before the ED team completed its questioning at his Kanke Street residence, and was arrested the same evening. He was produced before the PMLA Special Court in Ranchi, which sent him to judicial custody. Soren denied the charges and described the action as politically motivated. He was subsequently granted bail by the Jharkhand High Court and returned to active politics, winning the November 2024 state assembly election and resuming office as Chief Minister. His trial before the PMLA court continues. (Sources: The Week, January 31, 2024; Lawyers Club India, February 5, 2024)
The tribal land fraud in Jharkhand is not confined to Ranchi. In Bokaro district, the CID arrested Izhar Hussain and Akhtar Hussain in July 2025 for fabricating documents to claim ownership of over 100 acres of forest land in Tetulia Mouza that had been transferred by Bokaro Steel Plant back to the Forest Department. Investigators found that the fraud involved forged registered sale deeds, manipulated genealogy documents, and a nexus of land mafia operators, local government officials from the Chas Circle Office and sub-registrar office, and insiders connected to BSP. A 2016 SIT report for Bokaro district alone had found that nearly 68,000 acres of government land had been illegally transferred, including 20,000 acres in Chas. The ED joined the investigation in April 2025, raiding 15 to 16 locations across Jharkhand and Bihar in connection with the financial trails. The matter has reached the Supreme Court. (Source: The Researchers, July 12, 2025)
What the cumulative picture shows is not a series of isolated fraud cases but a functioning system, operating across multiple districts, involving land brokers, revenue officials, district-level officers, and in the most significant instance, the state’s highest elected office, designed specifically to circumvent legislation that was put in place over a century ago to protect some of the most economically vulnerable communities in India.
The practical consequences for SC and ST families whose land was stolen through this system are not abstract. When a plot is fraudulently reclassified in the revenue register and sold to a buyer outside the protected community, the original tribal family loses not just the land but also the legal clarity of their position. Recovering land through the CNT Act’s restoration provisions, under Section 71A, requires that the Deputy Commissioner act on a complaint. When the DC is himself an accused in a money laundering case, as happened here with Chhavi Ranjan, the mechanism designed to protect tribal land becomes the mechanism through which it is taken.
The Jharkhand High Court directed in January 2012, in a ruling that was reported extensively at the time, that the CNT Act’s provisions apply to SC and backward class lands as well as ST lands, and made DC consent mandatory for transfers across all three protected categories. That order, advocates of tribal rights have noted, was subsequently undermined through a government ordinance that weakened the consent requirements for certain categories of transfer. The cycle of protection, violation, judicial intervention, and legislative rollback has repeated itself across decades.
As of 2025, the ED has charged multiple individuals before the PMLA Special Court in Ranchi. The Jharkhand High Court is seized of the agency’s writ petition documenting the state government’s alleged inaction. The Supreme Court is monitoring the Bokaro forest land case. And across Jharkhand’s land registers, the work of determining which records are genuine and which are fabrications continues.
The CNT Act will turn 117 years old in 2025. The land it was designed to protect is still being stolen. The investigators are still counting the acres.
SOURCE LOG
ED raids September 2025, Kanke, Kadru, Ashok Nagar, Delhi: ProKerala/IANS, “Jharkhand tribal land scam: ED raids nine locations in Ranchi, Delhi,” September 23, 2025 (prokerala.com); IBC World News, September 23, 2025 (ibcworldnews.com); SocialNews.XYZ/IANS, September 23, 2025
Kamlesh Kumar Singh arrest July 26, 2024; prosecution complaint filed: ProKerala, “ED conducts searches in Ranchi and Delhi in connection with land scam case, seizes Rs 59 lakh,” September 25, 2025 (prokerala.com)
Afsar Ali, 150 acres, fake documents, senior officer complicity: Lagatar24, “ED asks Jharkhand govt to lodge FIR in Ranchi land, illegal mining scams,” July 20, 2023 (lagatar24.com)
Chhavi Ranjan, Bhanu Pratap Prasad, Amit Agarwal, full accused list: Lagatar24, July 20, 2023; Lawyers Club India, “Jharkhand Land Scam Case,” February 5, 2024 (lawyersclubindia.com)
Defence land 4.55 acres, 7.16 acres Hehal, fake 1932 records: The Week, “Jharkhand land scam: A curious case of fake land deeds pre-dating Independence,” January 31, 2024 (theweek.in); Lawyers Club India, February 5, 2024
14 arrested by January 2024; Rs 161 crore attachments; 40+ searches: OpIndia, “Rs 5,000 crore loss to taxpayers, 47 FIRs against Jharkhand officials in past 2 years,” November 11, 2024 (opindia.com)
ED’s 140-page writ petition to Jharkhand High Court: OpIndia, November 11, 2024
Hemant Soren arrest January 31, 2024; 8.5 acres alleged possession: The Week, January 31, 2024; Lawyers Club India, February 5, 2024
Bokaro forest land scam, Izhar Hussain, Akhtar Hussain, 68,000 acres SIT finding: The Researchers, “CID Cracks Down on Bokaro Land Scam: Two Arrested in Rs 100 Crore Forest Land Fraud,” July 12, 2025 (theresearchers.us)
CNT Act Sections 46, 71A; SC ruling on SC/ST land prohibition: Vidhikarya legal database (vidhikarya.com); RestTheCase, “Rules for Buying Land of Scheduled Caste in India,” 2026 (restthecase.com)
Shyam Prasad Sinha petition, 70% land illegally transferred: The Print/ANI, “Plea in SC seeks abolition of Acts which restrict sale of tribal land to non-tribes in Jharkhand,” June 1, 2022 (theprint.in)
January 2012 Jharkhand High Court order, DC consent mandatory: NewsClick, “Jharkhand Government’s War on Tribals” (newsclick.in)
