7 booked for another fraud carried out from VS Secretariat

LUCKNOW: Nearly two months after UP Special Task Force (STF) exposed a fraud having involvement of some journalists and staff of the Vidhan Sabha secretariat, the police on Tuesday said it had detected another fraud of similar nature committed from the same place.

Police said the same gang of fraudsters, including key accused Ashish Rai, was allegedly involved in duping over ₹1 crore from a businessman Neelam Narendra Bhai Patel of Ahmedabad on the pretext of providing food and civil supplies contract worth ₹ 120crore.

In earlier fraud, Rai and 14 others had allegedly duped over ₹9.72 crore from Indore businessman Manjit Singh Bhatia on pretext of providing a supply contract worth ₹292.14 crore in the animal husbandry department. Assistant commissioner of police (ACP) of Hazratganj, Abhay Mishra said a fresh FIR on the complaint of Ahmedabadbased businessman had been lodged against Rai and six others with Hazratganj police station on Tuesday.

“Like in dealing with Indorebased businessman, Rai had used a room at Vidhan Sabha secretariat as his office and posed as joint secretary of food and civil supplies department to gain confidence of the trader and garnering ₹ 1.02 crore for awarding supply of salt,” he emphasised. Another police official privy to the investigation said the complainant told them that he got into the deal after meeting one Sunil Gurjar alias Monty Gurjar through Kaleem Ahmad of Ahmedabad in Delhi.

He said Gurjar offered to provide him the contract of salt supply floated by food and civil supplies department. He also arranged his meeting with NK Kannaujia, who was introduced to him as joint secretary of the department.

He said Kannuajia was later identified as Rai, who impersonated as joint secretary to dupe the businessman. He said Rai posed as a deputy director of the animal husbandry department in the previous case when the Indore-based businessman was duped on the same pattern.

He said Monty Gurjar is also accused in the previous case and is still at large while as many as nine people had been arrested .

Those arrested so far included Noida-based journalist Anil Rai, Rajneesh Dixit, personal secretary to minister of state for animal husbandry, a contractual class four employee of the minister’s office Dheeraj Kumar, Ashish Rai, AK Rajeev, Rupak Rai, Uma Shankar Tewari, Sachin Verma and Tripurari Pandey.