Court remands 11 days police custody to 19 Assam officers arrested in cash for job scam

All the 19 Assam civil, police and allied services officers arrested on Wednesday last by police for their alleged involvement in  ' Cash for Job' scam of Assam Public Service Commission have been produced before the Court of Special Judge in Guwahati on Thursday.

The Court remanded the arrested 19 official to 11 days police custody. Later police had taken the officers to an undisclosed location for further questioning.

All the 19 Assam civil, police and allied services officers arrested on Wednesday last by police for their alleged role in involvement of ' Cash for Job' scam of Assam Public Service Commission to be produced  before the Court of Special Judge in Guwahati on Thursday.

The ACS officers arrested on Wednesday last are Utpal Bhuyan, Barnali Das, Susovan Das, Dhruvojyoti Chakraborty, Manzoor Ilahi Laskar, Moon Mazoomdar, Mustafa Ahmed Borbhuyan, Md Saibur Rahman Borbhuyan, Monika Teronpi, Ganesh Chandra Das, Srabanti Sen Gupta, Deepsikha Phukan and Leena Krishna Kakati. The arrested APS officials are Gulshan Daolagapu, Pallavi Sharma and Bhargav Phukan. The three other arrested allied services officers are Rituraj Neog (Superintendent of Taxes), and Nipon Kumar Pathak(  Inspector of Taxes),  and Suranjita Hazarika, District Transport Officer, Guwahati.

Among the 19 Assam officers arrested for 'Cash for Job' scam included Pallavi Sharma of Assam police service is daughter of Tezpur BJP MP Ram Prasad Sharma.

The 19 officers of state civil, police and allied services were summoned by Dibrugarh police on Wednesday last to the Assam Police Special Branch headquarters at Kahilipara in Guwahati for handwritten test.

Later they all were arrested by police and kept eight female officers at the Panbazar women police station for whole night. The arrested male officers were kept at Assam police special branch guest house.

Police have so far arrested 55 officer belonged to different services of Assam civil services of the 2015, 2016 batch in the cash for job scam. The accused officers' answer scripts were checked by forensic experts, which confirmed anomalies. All these anomalies were taken place during the chairmanship of Rakesh Kr. Paul in APSC. Paul was arrested on November 4 last year and Rs 50 lakh seized from him.  Two APSC members Samedur Rahman and Basanta Kumar Doley were arrested later.

There have been allegations from different quarters against Dibrugarh police that right from the day one of APSC cash for job scam investigation, it is being soft towards some high profile officers having high political connection.

Dibrugarh SP Gautom Bora while ruling out any biasness or favouritism towards any officers whose name surfaced during the investigation said that police have been strictly followed all the norms for the investigation.

"We have strictly follows all the legal norms in the entire investigation of APSC job scam.  Arrests have been made after concrete evidences against officers were found. Investigations are still on. Now law will take its own course" EOM