With Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath giving 24-hour time to arrest those involved in the fire incident in the Home Guard office and also asking officials to submit a detailed report in this regard, the Gautam Buddha Nagar police on Wednesday acted swiftly and arrested five officials for their alleged role in the fraudulent withdrawal of salaries of the force personnel,
Their arrests come a day after muster rolls (attendance logs) of all home guard personnel were found burnt in a box inside the office of the Gautam Buddha Nagar district commandant office of the Home Guard in Greater Noida.
Director General of Police OP Singh said here on Wednesday that a high level probe had been ordered into the fire at the office of the district commandant of Home Guard in Gautam Buddha Nagar on Tuesday.
He said that a forensic team from Gujarat had been asked to probe into the incident and find out the details of the fire.
“The government is very serious on the Home Guard duty scam and even Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has taken cognisance of the incident,” the DGP said.
Meanwhile, Senior Superintendent of Police of Gautam Buddha Nagar Vaibhav Krishna, in his message to the state police headquarters here on Wednesday said that police had arrested present Divisional Commandant of Home Guard, Ram Narayan Chaurasia (earlier district commandant, HG district GBN), assistant company commander Satish, platoon commanders Montu, Satveer and Shailendra in connection with the Home Guard muster roll scam case.
He said the accused had disclosed all the details about their modus operandi before the police during interrogation.
Half-a-dozen other persons suspected to be involved in the Monday night incident have also been detained by the police for interrogation.
On Monday night, a major fire broke out at the office of the district commandant of Home Guard in Gautam Buddha Nagar, destroying the salary muster rolls of home guards and other documents related to their duty.
On November 13, the Noida police had unearthed a salary scam allegedly running into crores of rupees in the Home Guard department. Police said it seemed like a criminal act as only the salary papers were destroyed in the room. “An FIR has been lodged and a probe has been launched to find the cause of the fire,” the police added.
The scam is related to fraudulent withdrawal of salaries of several home guards in the district who reported on duty only for 15 to 20 days in a month. An FIR was registered against unnamed officials for fraudulent withdrawal of salaries of the home guards.
The fire broke out at the Surajpur office of district commandant of Home Guard. But surprisingly, the records, which were in a trunk, were burnt but there was no sign of fire on the body of the trunk.
“It seems somebody unlocked the trunk and burnt the salary muster roll up to 2014,” police said.
Police had unearthed the scam when a discrepancy of Rs 7.5 lakh was found in the salaries of home guards posted in seven police stations of the districts over a period of 45 days. The sample suggested that it was a big scam and other districts also opened similar inquiries. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath took a serious note of the incident and directed the district officials to take prompt action and arrest the culprits.