STF nabs mastermind fraud from Jharkhand

LUCKNOW : The special task force (STF) of UP police arrested Shambhu Nath Gupta, the alleged mastermind of the multicrore fraud related to the state government’s paddy purchase scheme for farmers in Maharajganj district, from a hotel in Deoghar district of Jharkhand on Monday, said senior police officials here on Tuesday.

They said the mastermind, who owns a rice mill in Shikarpur area of Maharajganj district, used to fraudulently purchase paddy at government rates by using identities of different people and opening their bank accounts in which he would show them as farmers.

They said Gupta and his aides used to transfer the purchase amount to different accounts posing as if the amount was transferred to farmers and would later withdraw the same amount by making fake signatures on cheques. The officials said the mastermind fraudulently used the government scheme meant for farmers to earn multi-crore profit.

Sharing further details, a senior STF official said Gupta’s name surfaced in the fraud after the arrest of four people from Maharajganj district in February this year and he had been evading arrest since then. They said the Maharajganj police had also declared the reward of ₹50,000 on his arrest. He said Gupta had been living in a hotel in Deoghar district for several months on a fake identity.

The official said the police would seek his custody remand to interrogate him further and unravel the entire nexus involved behind it. He said the role of many other private and government employees was likely to surface during the investigation.

He said the matter came to light after the arrest of four people, including Bhalendu Chaturvedi, Shatrughan Pathak, Bhagwat Prasad and Vyasmuni Pathak, from Maharajganj district on February 17 this year.

The official said the police had then recovered 243 activated SIM cards issued on identity of different people, 297 cheque books and 331 single cheques of different banks of Maharajganj and Gorakhpur. He said the police had then registered an FIR against them for committing a fraud.