New Delhi, Dec 3 (PTI) The Supreme Court on Wednesday sought responses of the Centre, CBI, ED and the Chhattisgarh government on a plea of former IAS officer Anil Tuteja, arrested in liquor scam cases, seeking protection from further coercive action in as many as 11 FIRs registered by multiple investigating agencies.

A bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and justices Ujjal Bhuyan and N K Singh took note of the submissions of lawyers, Arshdeep Singh Khurana and Malak Bhatt, on behalf of the former IAS officer, and sought the responses of the probe agencies.

Besides the Directorate of Enforcement and the CBI, Tuteja, who was allegedly close to the earlier Congress-led Chhattisgarh government, has made the state anti-corruption Bureau, the Union Ministry of Finance and the Income Tax Department as parties to the petition.

“Restrain the respondent authorities from taking any further coercive steps against the Petitioner on the basis of material already in their possession, till the final adjudication of the instant case, in the interest of justice,” the plea, which referred to 11 pending criminal cases against Tuteja, said.

The plea alleged a “vindictive” strategy of “evergreening of arrests” by multiple investigative agencies to prolong his incarceration indefinitely.

The former bureaucrat has filed an appeal challenging the June 27 order of the Chhattisgarh High Court, which dismissed as non-maintainable his plea seeking protection from successive arrests by various agencies.

“The present SLP is being preferred by the humble Petitioner, who has been confined in custody for over the last 14 months, arrested first on 21.04.2024 and subsequently in two successive cases, all in relation to the same allegations and alleged transactions i.e. the liquor scam in the State of Chhattisgarh,” the plea said.

Tuteja, a retired IAS officer who served the state for over 34 years, alleged that he was being systematically victimised since 2015 for refusing to take the blame in the alleged NAN (Nagrik Aapurti Nigam) scam, and for seeking a probe against senior political functionaries of the then ruling establishment during 2013–2018.

The plea claimed his attempts to highlight the role of “actual culprits” led to a decade-long pattern of retributive targeting, which intensified after the change of government in Chhattisgarh in December 2023.

The petition claimed that five different agencies have raided him on multiple occasions over 10 years, but no unaccounted wealth or proceeds of crime have ever been recovered.

Despite this, the probe agencies are “weaponising the state machinery” to keep him in perpetual pre-trial incarceration, it claimed.

The plea gave details of a series of arrests across multiple FIRs and ECIRs and said allegations are overlapping and these actions are aimed at “evergreening” his custody.

The plea said the former officer has spent more than 14 months in jail across three different cases, all allegedly linked to the liquor and scam cases.

Even after the grant of bail in some cases and quashing of certain proceedings, the petition says agencies continue to keep fresh FIRs “in reserve” as "insurance arrests" to ensure he remains behind bars.

The plea referred to apex court orders on various petitions and said that in April 2024, the top court quashed an ED case against him.

Later, his arrest by UP Police was declared illegal in May 2025, it added. PTI SJK RT