New Delhi/Jaipur, Apr 24 (PTI) The Enforcement Directorate Thursday arrested Congress leader and former Rajasthan minister Mahesh Joshi in a money laundering case linked to alleged irregularities in the Jal Jeevan Mission scheme, officials said.

Joshi, 70, was taken into custody under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) by the federal probe agency after about seven-eight hours of questioning at its office in Jaipur, they said.

He was produced before a special PMLA court in Jaipur that sent him to ED custody for four days, according to the officials.

The ED’s money laundering case stems from an FIR registered by Rajasthan’s Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) to probe the alleged irregularities in the scheme that aims to provide safe and adequate drinking water through household tap connections.

The scheme was implemented in Rajasthan by the state’s Public Health Engineering Department (PHED) during the previous Ashok Gehlot government. Joshi was the minister of this department in the Gehlot government.

Reacting to the Joshi’s arrest, former chief minister Gehlot called it a “political vendetta” and said that the ED has become the “extortion department” of the BJP.

This is the fifth arrest in this case by the ED.

Sanjay Badaya, an alleged middleman, Mahesh Mittal, proprietor of Shree Ganpati Tubewell Company, Padamchand Jain, proprietor of Shree Shyam Tubewell Company, and a man named Piyush Jain were taken into custody earlier.

The agency’s investigation found that Padamchand Jain, Mittal and others were involved in giving bribes to public servants to obtain illegal protection, tenders, getting bills sanctioned and covering up irregularities in works executed by them in respect of various tenders they received from the PHED.

Badaya, the ED claimed, was in receipt of bribes from the accused firms like Shree Shyam Tubewell Company and Shree Ganpati Tubewell Company in order to facilitate favourable treatment.

He was also “influencing” officials of the PHED in carrying out their duties, it had said.

The suspects were also involved in the purchase of stolen goods from Haryana for using them in their tenders and had also submitted “fake” work completion letters from IRCON to get PHED contracts, the agency had claimed earlier.

Premises in Jaipur and Dausa, including the residential and official premises of senior PHED officials and Joshi, were raided by the agency earlier.

In a post on X, former chief minister Gehlot said, “The arrest of former minister Mahesh Joshi by ED, which has become the extortion department of BJP, is an example of political vendetta.” He said that the arrest was made at a time when his wife has been battling for life and admitted to a hospital for the last 15 days.

Gehlot said that he (Joshi) wanted to give a statement to ED after coming out of this difficult situation.

The former Rajasthan CM alleged that this was an attempt to break Joshi emotionally so that ED could get a statement from him as per their desire. PTI NES SDA KVK KVK