STF nabs 7 conmen operating from VS secretariat room

LUCKNOW: The UP Special Task Force (STF) on Sunday arrested seven people, including a private secretary of a minister of state, and claimed to have unearthed a racket wherein conmen duped people after promising to award them contracts.

Additional superintendent of police (ASP), STF, Vishal Vikram Singh said 14 people, including some journalists and staff of the Vidhan Sabha secretariat were involved in duping an Indore based trader Manjit Singh Bhatia and pocketing ₹9.72 crore for awarding a fodder supply contract in the animal husbandry department.

He said more arrests and recoveries were likely in the matter soon. The accused had easy access to the secretariat and even used a room there as their office, making people believe that they were capable of awarding government contracts, the STF official said.

A senior police official privy to the investigation said the role of some police officers was also being probed.

The ASP said those arrested were identified as Rajneesh Dixit, who is the private secretary to the minister of state, a contractual class four employee Dheeraj Kumar Dev, Ashish Rai and Akhilesh Kumar alias AK Rajeev. Anil Rai, Rupak Rai and Uma Shankar Tewari were arrested later in the evening.

He said total of Rs 28.32 lakh was also recovered from the houses of Ashish Rai and AK Rajeev.

He said the names of seven more people, including Arun Rai, Monty Gurjar, Santosh Mishra, Amit Mishra, Dil Bahar Singh Yadav as well as home guard Raghubir Yadav and driver Vijay Kumar, who were deployed with officials of the animal husbandry department, had come to light.

Sharing further details, the ASP said the STF was conducting

14 PEOPLE, INCLUDING SOME JOURNALISTS, WERE INVOLVED IN DUPING; A PRIVATE SECY OF A MINISTER AND 3 OTHER PERSONS HAVE BEEN ARRESTED

a probe into the complaint of Manjit Singh Bhatia for the past few weeks during which it was revealed that Ashish Rai met Bhatia posing as a deputy director, animal husbandry, in a room at the Vidhan Sabha secretariat.

The STF official said the home guard and the driver and other staff helped Ashish Rai to mislead the complainant and procured ₹9.72 crore through multiple means with the promise to provide the contract. He said the conmen issued a forged work order of the contract.

The STF official said they tried to threaten the complainant when he started demanding his money back. The accused got an Azamgarh criminal involved to issue threats to Bhatia, he added.

An FIR was lodged against the accused at the Hazratganj police station on Saturday night when the complainants’ allegation was found true during initial investigation, he said. They were booked on charges of fraud, forgery, criminal breach of trust, impersonation and criminal conspiracy, as well as Prevention of Corruption Act, the official added.