The Bombay High Court on 9 October granted bail to Sachin Sawant, a 2008 batch Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer who was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in June 2023 in connection with a money laundering case.
Sawant, who served as Additional Commissioner (Appeals) at the Lucknow CGST and Central Excise Zone, was accused by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) of accumulating disproportionate assets amounting to Rs 2.45 crore between 2011 and 2020, reported India Today.
“An IRS officer, former Deputy Director of ED Mr Sachin Sawant, was arrested by ED without waiting for CBI to conclude the investigation. The complaint was file by a person who was arrested by the officer during his tenure in ED. In the complaint, Disproportionate Asset (DA ) was alleged was Rs 2.45 cr and the opening balance of the asset at the start of the test period was alleged to be only Rs 1.14 lakh. On such ground officer was behind bars for more than 14 months,” Sawant’s advocate on record in Bombay High Court, Ujjwalkumar Chavhan, said on Facebook.
Chavan further said: “Happy and satisfied to see the colleague out of jail and getting relief. But exposure to this overall process is horrifying.”
Notably, despite the CBI filing an FIR against Sawant in June 2022, it neither arrested him nor filed a chargesheet to date.
The ED, treating the CBI case as the predicate offence, initiated its own investigation in December 2023, alleging that Sawant and his family amassed assets 204 per cent greater than their known income.
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