Assam: V&AC arrests IAS officer in connection with Rs 2250 crore scam
Guwahati, Jan 8 (IBNS): The sleuths of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption of Assam Police on Monday arrested another IAS officer in connection with the Rs 2250 crore scam of Social Welfare department.
The arrested IAS officer, who served as the director of the Assam government department, was absconding since February 2017 last.
According to the reports, following a tip-off, the sleuths of V&AC arrested IAS officer Kumud Kalita from Guwahati.
The Assam government suspended the IAS officer after revealing his involvement in the multi-crore rupees scam.
Earlier, the Assam police announced a cash reward of Rs 1 lakh to anyone who can provide information leading to absconding IAS officer Kumud Kalita.
V&AC had registered a case into the multi-crore rupees scam following directive by Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal.
On July 28 last, the investigating agency had arrested another IAS officer Dilip Borthakur (former director of the Social Welfare department) in connection with the scam.
A top official of V&AC said that, the investigating agency had already submitted a charge sheet of the scam before the court.
“11 persons including both the arrested IAS officers' names were included as accused in the charge sheet,” the top official said.
Earlier, the V&AC had arrested six officials of social welfare department on February 27 last year in connection with the scam.
The arrested officials are District officer of Goalpara Hemi Borah, District officer of Kamrup Kishori Dutta, Accounts officer RS Bhattacharya, UD assistant Debasish Dey, LD assistant Sajid Hussain and Programme officer Kulen Saikia.
In connection with the multi-crore rupees scam, the V&AC team had also grilled three former Congress ministers including Akon Bora, Gautam Roy and Ajanta Neog.
The vigilance team had grilled at least 32 officials including three IAS officials into the scam.
In 2016, Assam CM had directed to probe the multi crore scam during the previous Congress regime.
During the investigation it was revealed that an amount of Rs 150 crore was siphoned off every year from the social welfare department of the state for the past 15 years.
The investigation also detected nine lakh fake entries of ‘ghost children’ in the ICDS list.
The top official of V&AC said that 390 fake Anganwadi centres have been identified, which were fraudulently entered for siphoning off the money.
(Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath)
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