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Contractor Lal Babu Singh was arrested in Dhanbad late on Tuesday night.
Lal Babu hit the headlines last November when the income tax department recovered more than Rs 100 crore from more than a dozen bank accounts in Jharia and Dhanbad that he was allegedly operating in the names of various relatives.
The contractor was arrested with four others — his brothers Kumbhnath Singh and Bharat Singh — and two persons identified as Om Prakash Singh and Mithilesh Kumar.
The arrests were in connection with an attack on a CBI team in Shimla Bahal locality of Jharia on July 30. Kumbhnath Singh was the main accused in the FIR registered by BCCL manager V.K. Thakur in Jharia police station, along with another contractor D.K. Singh.
The arrests took place during a raid conducted by a special police team comprising DSP (law and order) Sanjay Ranjan Singh, Sindri DSP Rama Nand Sharma, trainee DSP Christopher Kispotta, officer in charge of Bank More police station Shiv Shankar Tiwari, sub inspector Ravi Thakur, sub inspector Shankar Kamti and members of the police technical cell at Hotel Kuber on Luby Circular Road.
Sources said the arrests followed a tip-off that all five were staying in room numbers 204 and 206 but had checked in under fake names. The police seized a car besides 10 mobile phones from the arrested.
Dhanbad superintendent of police Ravi Kant Dhan confirmed the arrests were in connection with a attack on a joint CBI-vigilance department team which was investigating alleged anomalies in various schemes being executed at Shimla Bahal locality of Jharia on July 30. “Though main accused D.K. Singh is yet to be arrested, we have got Kumbhnath,” he said.
Sindri DSP R.N. Sharma said Kumbhnath and the others were also accused of obstructing government work, possessing and using illegal arms.
Notably, the joint CBI and vigilance department team led by a CBI inspector came under attack from more than a dozen people on July 30 around 6pm when they were carrying out a probe into anomalies in road construction work done by contractor D.K. Singh, a close confidant of Lal Babu. The attackers who manhandled the probe team also fired at the team. Nobody, however, was injured in the incident.
The probe team, which was also accompanied by some BCCL officials, somehow managed to flee the spot.
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