Shashikant Kumar was taken into custody on August 2, 2023, by the Directorate of Enforcement (ED), for violating the Money Laundering Act of 2002 in the Kotak Mahindra Bank fraud case.
Based on an FIR filed by Gandhi Maidan P.S. Patna under several IPC 1860 provisions, the ED began an inquiry. In the charge sheet, it was claimed that 13 fraudulent transactions totalling Rs. 31.93 crores were carried out from the bank account of the district land acquisition officer (DLAO) and competent authority for land acquisition (CALA), causing a significant loss to the government exchequer.
On 10/7/2023, the ED detained Sumit Kumar, the bank manager at the Kotak Mahindra Bank’s Boring Road Branch in Patna, during an inquiry. Shashikant Kumar was one of Sumit Kumar’s close partners in the theft of government monies, according to an ED inquiry. In order to simplify the routing of money and the eventual conversion of those monies into cash, Shashikant Kumar set up organisations and associated bank accounts. He helped Sumit Kumar and his accomplices use Hawala routes to transfer money.
Shashikant Kumar was stopped at the Bhubaneswar Airport by the Bureau of Immigration, Bhubaneswar, on July 31, 2023, while he was travelling back from Dubai because of an open LOC. He was thereafter turned over to the ED, who arrested him in Bhubaneswar on August 2, 2023, and later brought him before the Special PMLA Court in Patna on August 2, 2023. Shashikant Kumar was placed in judicial custody until August 7, 2023, at which point the Honourable PMLA Court, by decision dated August 4, 2023, remanded him to ED custody for a period of six days. Further research is now being conducted.
