ED raids 14 locations across India in toll plaza scam, seizes over Rs 1 crore cash
New Delhi/Allahabad, Sep 3 (IANS) The Directorate of Enforcement’s (ED) Allahabad Sub-Zonal Office on Tuesday conducted search operations at 14 premises spread across Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, West Bengal, and Delhi-NCR under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002.
The action forms part of an ongoing investigation into the “Toll Plaza Scam” involving large-scale fraudulent toll collection.
The ED probe was initiated on the basis of an FIR registered by Uttar Pradesh Police concerning fraudulent practices at Atraila Toll Plaza in Mirzapur and several other toll plazas across the country.
In January 2025, the state police had exposed a major fraud at Atraila Shiv Gulam Toll Plaza, where an unauthorised mobile application was used to collect tolls from vehicles that had no FASTag or insufficient balance.
The illegal app generated fake receipts and concealed the collections from the National Highways Authority of India’s (NHAI) official system, thereby causing substantial revenue loss to the authority.
ED investigators found that two unauthorised applications — ‘Mobdata’ and ‘Any’ — were developed and deployed to facilitate toll collection from non-FASTag vehicles.
Dedicated portals were maintained to monitor these illegal collections. Forensic examination of digital devices seized from the accused revealed that the same mechanism was used at around 100 toll plazas. Digital records showed unauthorised toll receipts running into crores of rupees.
Further investigation has brought to light the role of intermediaries and toll collection entities entrusted by NHAI in deploying these unauthorised applications.
A wider network of toll plazas and associated persons and entities has been identified and is under detailed examination.
During the searches, the ED recovered and seized cash amounting to approximately Rs 1.03 crore, along with books of account, financial records, bank-related documents and digital devices. Eight bank lockers were frozen.
A large volume of incriminating material relating to toll-wise collection and reporting, non-FASTag collections, bank accounts, financial transactions and suspicious communications was also seized. Officials said the recovery of cash and digital evidence strengthens the case of systematic diversion of public revenue through the unauthorised toll collection system.
Further investigation into the money-laundering aspects of the scam is in progress.
–IANS
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