Ex-minister’s personal secretary, 4 others held

LUCKNOW : Personal secretary of former UP minister Swami Prasad Maurya along with four other people were arrested by UP Special Task Force (STF) for duping youths on pretext of providing them government jobs, said senior police officials here on Thursday.

They stated that Maurya’s personal secretary Arman Khan, a resident of Padrauna, with the help of his accomplice Asgar Ali who ran an outsourcing agency, used to mint money from youths by arranging training inside the secretariat with the help of one Mohd Faizi. Faizi had got supply work of a private company that is doing digitalization work of some departments of the secretariat. He used to arrange training for job aspirants inside the government building as he was given workspace there, which made the youths easily fall into the trap of the accused.

Sharing further details, UP Police Additional Director General (ADG), Law and Order, Prashant Kumar said those arrested were identified as Arman Khan, Asgar Ali, Mohd Faizi, Vishal Gupta and Amit Rai. He said the STF team arrested the accused from the crossing near National PG College under Hazratganj police station limits. He said further efforts are on for the arrest of their other accomplices identified as Zameel, Munawar, Swapnil and Mohd Saifi.

STF deputy SP Deepak Kumar Singh informed that Arman Khan misused his position and often used to arrange meetings of job aspirants with the minister to show his clout. “Other than arranging fake training schedules, Arman and Swapnil used to make job aspirants get registered for the job on a fake railway website created by them and later showed recruitment result on it to win their confidence,” the DSP said and added, “Swapnil had been earlier arrested in a different case.” He said multiple marksheets and educational certificates as well as fake identity cards and fake appointment letters have been recovered from their possession. He said the STF has also seized 57 cheques of different banks and two secretariat passes from them. To mention, Maurya had switched over to the Samajwadi Party before recently held assembly elections. He lost the election against his BJP rival Surendra Kumar Kushwaha from Fazil Nagar assembly seat.