IAS officer Pooja Singhal met Amit Shah days before ED raids? Truth behind viral claim!

A photo of disgraced IAS officer Pooja Singhal whispering in Home Minister Amit Shah’s ears has gone viral on social media. Claims are being made that the IAS officer met Amit Shah just days before Rs. 19 crore was recovered from her chartered accountant during the last week’s ED raids on her premises.

The financial probe agency had conducted raids on multiple locations linked to Singhal in four states namely Jharkhand, Bihar, West Bengal and Punjab. The discovery of unexplained cash in such a high volume had raised several questions on the role of IAS officers.

Filmmaker Avinash Das on Sunday shared a photo of Amit Shah and Singhal claiming that the civil servant had met the home minister just days before the ED raids. “A photo of Pooja Singhal just days before crores of rupees were seized from her house,” wrote Das in Hindi.

Also Read: IAS officer Pooja Singhal, Rs. 19 crore cash, husband’s 5-star super speciality hospital bring role of civil servants in India under spotlight

The photo shared by the director of Anaarkali Of Aarah, showed a woman whispering in Shah’s ears.

घर से करोड़ों का कैश पकड़ाने से थोड़े दिनों पहले पूजा सिंघल की एक तस्वीर। pic.twitter.com/X4dlyf1UNq

— Avinash Das (@avinashonly) May 8, 2022

The photo shared by Das was liked by 25,000 users and retweeted by more than nearly 6,000 users on Twitter.

A search carried out by Janta Ka Reporter found that the woman in the photo was indeed Pooja Singhal. However, there was no truth in Das’s claim that the photo was taken just days before the ED raids.

The photo in question was taken in 2017 when Amit Shah visited Jharkhand to function billed as Gharib Kalyan Mela, which was held in the state capital Ranchi. Jharkhand was then ruled by the BJP with Raghubar Das as its chief minister. Singhal had served as the agriculture secretary in the previous BJP government.

After his speech at the said rally in 2017, Shah had also distributed cheques and other relief packages to several individuals under the schemes run by the Narendra Modi government.

Singhal was seen playing an active role in inviting the recipients onto the stage as can be seen in the video above.

So, the claim that Singhal met Shah just days before the ED raids is FAKE.