The Enforcement Directorate (ED) Chandigarh Zonal Office has provisionally attached 9 immovable properties of former IAS officer Murari Lal Tayal. This includes two houses and seven apartments located in Chandigarh, New Delhi and Gurgaon.
The ED has also attached bank balance of Rs 14.06 crore in connection with case of Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002.
Tayal, who is accused of amassing assets disproportionate to his income, had served as principal secretary to the then Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda before being appointed as member of Competition Commission of India for five years (2009-2014).
The investigation was initiated on the basis of an FIR registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Anti-Corruption Branch (ACB), Chandigarh.
As per the chargesheet, CBI has also named Tayal's wife Savit Tayal and his son Kartik Tayal as accused in connection with a disproportionate assets (DA) case registered in 2017.
Murari Lal Tayal, a 1976-batch retired IAS officer, was a powerful bureaucrat during the tenure of Bhupinder Singh Hooda and UPA-II government at centre.
What is the CBI case?
The CBI had said that Tayal while working in the capacity of a public servant has acquired huge assets in the form of movable and immovable properties in his own name and in the name of his family members by corrupt and illegal means and by misusing his official position during the period of January 1, 2006, to December 31, 2014.
As per CBI, Savita Tayal retired as principal in 2012 from a government college in Panchkula and she was appointed as member of the Haryana Public Service Commission from where she retired in June 2016.
As per the CBI, Kartik Tayal, a law graduate, worked as a broker in the sale and purchase of land in Gurugram.
Tayal has also been named as one of the accused in the Manesar land scam, which pertains to the chargesheet filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) against former Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and 33 others for the Manesar Industrial Model Townshipland acquisition scam.
This scam resulted in Rs 1500 crore loss to the farmers of Manesar and neighbouring village in Gurugram district whose 688 acre land was being acquired at a low rate for “public purpose”.
This land was later licensed to real estate companies after granting them out of term favours and concessions. Private builders grabbed 400 acres land from farmers at throwaway price based on the threat of acquisition by the government.
Once this land was bought by the builders, Hooda government released this land from the acquisition process in the favor of builders instead of the original owners.
Market value of this 400 acre land was nearly Rs 4 crore per acre or total Rs 1600 crore, which was acquired by the builders at only Rs 100 crore, causing a loss of Rs1500 crore to innocent farmer owners of Manesar, Naurangpur and Lakhnoula villages.
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