Sources said the arrest comes a day after the agency conducted raids at his flats in Mumbai and Lucknow on Tuesday in connection with its case based on a June 2022 CBI FIR against him for assets worth Rs 2.5 crore disproportionate to his known sources of income. Held from his Gomtinagar Extension flat in Lucknow, Sawant was produced before a special court in Mumbai that remanded him in ED custody till July 5.
Sawant served as ED’s deputy director in Mumbai Zone 2 between 2017 and 2019, and became officer on special duty to a senior minister in the previous state government in 2020 before joining GST in Lucknow.
The CBI registered the disproportionate assets case after receiving a corruption complaint against Sawant. In 2011, the total assets of the Sawant family were Rs 1.4 lakh; in 2022, it soared to Rs 2.1 crore.
The ED found that a flat in the Sea Queen Heritage building in Navi Mumbai was purchased in the name of Seven Hills Constrowell India, in which Sawant’s father, a retired assistant police sub-inspector, was a director. Amounts for the flat’s purchase had been routed through different loans, and personal and current accounts of Sawant’s parents and brother. About Rs 1 crore for the Rs 1.3 crore flat was arranged in cash.
The registered office of Seven Hills Constrowell was found to be in a chawl in Dadar (East) and it had filed only one income-tax return in 2018-19, showing its gross income as nil and Rs 6,800 as loss. The mobile number provided in the ITR belonged to Sawant.
(With Pathikrit Chakraborty in Lucknow)
