Five held for fraudulently withdrawing money from Assam Chief Minister's Relief Fund

GUWAHATI: Five persons were arrested from Uttar Pradesh for fraudulently withdrawing money from Assam Chief Minister's Relief Fund.

Accordingly, on receipt of instruction, on August 12, Rosie Kalita, Superintendent of Police, Chief Minister's Special Vigilance Cell, Assam filed an FIR in the Vigilance Police Station. During investigation, it was found that some amounts was fraudulently withdrawn by cheques in the states of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh by forging the cheques and signatures of Chief Minister of Assam.

Police in a statement stated, “On 27th of August, a team of 7 officers of Chief Minister's Special Vigilance Cell went and raided some remote areas of Gorakhpur and Basti districts of Uttar Pradesh and apprehended 5 accused persons. During interrogation they admitted to have committed the offence and also said that they had committed the same from other states”


Police added that they are forwarded to the Special Court and brought on remand for 10 days. It was completely a covert operation so that the culprits do not get alerted. Chief Minister, Sarbananda Sonowal himself monitored the case on a daily basis and gave the SP, Special Vigilance Cell deadline of 15 days to crack the case, and the team could apprehend the culprits within the time frame. It was a huge operation carried out with the support of Chief Minister's Office Uttar Pradesh, Chief Minister's Office, Assam, UP police.

Police said that the government money fraudulently withdrawn was refunded by the State Bank of India as there were faults on their part. “This is a wakeup call for all the State Governments of India to secure the Government funds as there are huge credit balances in the accounts and very less monitoring and auditing of the funds, and this is taken as an advantage by the criminals who had been involved in fraudulent withdrawal of money from government funds across the country”.