In a major operation, the Anti-Corruption Branch (ACB) of the Assam Police has arrested a Divisional Forest Officer (DFO) in Assam after he was caught red-handed while accepting a bribe of Rs30,000. During raids on his two residences later, ACB sleuths recovered close to Rs3 crore in cash and several animal parts, including a tiger skin, deer skin and elephant tusks.
The ACB officials said that Mahat Chandra Talukdar, Divisional Forest Officer (DFO) of eastern Assam’s Dhemaji district was first arrested red-handed after he accepted a bribe of Rs30,000 from a businessman in his office on Monday evening. later, the ACB officials raided his official residence in Dhemaji and recovered Rs62,25,420.
At the same time, another team of the ACB sleuths raided his house in Guwahati and recovered Rs4,27,000, a tiger skin, a deer skin, some elephant tusks and some other wildlife parts. The ACB sleuths, however, could not open three secret lockers in his Guwahati residence which were locked using some digital password.
Talukdar was brought to Guwahati by the ACB sleuths on Tuesday and opened the three lockers, which led to recovery of over Rs2 crore in cash and over one kg of gold jewellery. “The counting of the money is on and we expect that the amount will cross over Rs2 crore. Meanwhile, we have produced him in the court of the Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM) on Tuesday and sought him in three days remand,” said a senior ACB official while adding that the court has however, granted only 24 hours custody of Talukdar.
Talukdar who had been posted in Dhemaji since 2014, was supposed to retire on March next year. Talukdar had served as a DFO in famous Kaziranga national park for four years between 1989 to 1993 and 89 one-horned rhinos have been poached in the park during that period.
While the ACB had registered a case against Talukdar for accepting bribe they are likely to register another case against him for having assets disproportionate to his known source of income.
Meanwhile, Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal said that action will be taken against the officer as per the law and reiterated that his Government is committed to follow transparency and corruption-free practices and that the every Minister in the Government is bound to root out corruption from the State.
The arrest and seizure of the huge amount from a DFO came at a time when there is a change of guard in Assam and the new Government had taken over barely three weeks back. The new Forest Minister of the State, Pramila Rani Brahma had been taking up strong steps to streamline the Forest and Environment departments and particularly to stop the poaching of one-horned rhinos.