ED on Friday attached 24 properties owned by the accused, two months after it conducted searches on the premises of railway claims tribunal judge R K Mittal and his associates in a ₹50 crore fraudulent withdrawal case.

Earlier also, the agency acted against judges accused of bribery or ties with fraudsters involved in fixing benches and influencing judges for favorable judgments. In addition to the known instances, the agency is reportedly monitoring conflicts of interest among judges and alleged attempts to bribe them.

Back in 2023, On August 10, the ED arrested Sudhir Parmar, a former special court judge in Panchkula, for allegedly accepting bribes and favoring the accused in a money laundering case involving real estate developer IREO and its promoter, Lalit Goyal.

The agency arrested Goyal just a month before taking Parmar into custody. In April that year, the Punjab and Haryana High Court suspended Panchkula's special CBI court judge after agencies presented "incriminating evidence" showing his alleged favoritism toward IREO promoters accused in a money laundering investigation.

Later, the ED arrested Goyal's associates and M3M promoters, Basant Bansal and Pankaj Bansal, in a separate case. In its remand note, the ED claimed that Panchkula judge Sudhir Parmar had shown favoritism to the accused—Roop Bansal, his brother Basant Bansal, the owners of M3M, and Lalit Goyal, the owner of IREO Group—in exchange for undue advantages.

While investigating the Chhattisgarh PDS scam linked to the previous Congress-led government under Bhupesh Baghel, the ED found evidence of alleged liaisoning between two senior IAS officers accused in the case and a Chhattisgarh High Court judge to influence the trial.  

The ED brought this matter to the Supreme Court’s attention, leading to the judge’s transfer to the Patna High Court. This action mirrored the Supreme Court collegium’s proposal to transfer a Delhi High Court judge following the alleged recovery of a huge pile of cash from his residence.

In the case of the Chhattisgarh High Court judge, the ED informed the Supreme Court that IAS officers Anil Tuteja and Alok Shukla "were in touch with the high court judge who granted bail to Shukla." The agency further alleged that the then advocate general of the state acted as a liaison between the two accused and the judge, indirectly suggesting a quid pro quo in the relief granted to the officials under investigation in the PDS scam.