The Enforcement Directorate on Tuesday lodged an enforcement case information report (ECIR) over Rs 18 crore deposited in various bank accounts without the knowledge of the account holders.

An ECIR is equivalent to a a police FIR.

With this, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has officially taken up the case for a probe referred to it by the income tax department, which had suspected it to be a case of money laundering - turning black money into white - with a Maoist link.

In the preliminary probe, the ED found the Gaya case to have inter-state links spread across Gaya, Muzaffarpur, Kolkata, Delhi and other places, and involvement of big traders.

"A large number of accounts are involved. The case could go up to Rs 200 crore," an ED source said.

The Gaya case was detected after a few persons complained at civil lines police station against unknown persons for depositing huge amounts in their bank accounts without their knowledge. Subsequently, two FIRs were lodged.

It led to a joint operation by income tax and police on December 13, which discovered Rs 11 crore deposited in five bank accounts of a Bank of India branch in Gaya city after demonetisation.

Since then, income tax officers have detected Rs 18 crore in such deposits and suspect they were in scrapped notes.

According to income tax officials and the police a cotton mill owner and entrepreneur from Patwa Toli in Manpur block of Gaya is the prime suspect in the two cases. Involvement of bank officials in facilitating illegal deposits is also suspected.

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"This is because in many cases, the money was withdrawn from the accounts as well," the source said.

The Enforcement Directorate is gearing up to launch a massive investigation in the case and its officials have asked for evidence collected in the case by other agencies so far.