Enforcement Directorate officer who arrested both Arvind Kejriwal and Hemant Soren

Kapil Raj, an Additional Director-ranked officer with the Enforcement Directorate, led the probe agency team on Thursday.

That arrested Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, the first sitting Chief Minister to be arrested in India. It was Kapil Raj, a 2009-batch Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer, who also arrested former Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren on January 31.

Apart from these two notable ones, Kapil Raj has been involved in several high-profile cases.

Raj, who was recently promoted from the rank of Joint Director to Additional Director, was born in Uttar Pradesh’s Saharanpur. He was raised in a middle-class family and his father is a retired government servant.

After initial schooling, Kapil Raj completed his engineering degree from Lucknow and later cracked the UPSC exam in 2008. He was given Customs & Central Excise (C&CE) as his parent cadre.

After working for a few years with his parent cadre, Raj was sent on deputation to the Enforcement Directorate seven years ago, where he joined the Mumbai Zonal office of ED as Deputy Director.

While working in Mumbai, he worked on several high-profile cases, including the famous Punjab National Bank case involving billionaire fugitives Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi.

Kapil Raj was transferred to Delhi three years ago and promoted to the rank of Joint Director. He was given charge of the elite HIU (Headquarters Investigation Unit) in Delhi along with Jharkhand.

During this period, the officer worked on high-profile cases like the West Bengal coal scam that allegedly involved TMC MP Abhishek Banerjee, Jharkhand’s illegal mining case and land scam in which Hemant Soren was arrested, and the recent Delhi excise policy case in which Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has now been arrested.