Kolkata: In a major crackdown by the criminal investigation department (CID), two Indian army personnel and three cops have been arrested on Friday for misusing their positions for grafting a consignment of 15kg of smuggled gold. The two army men that include a senior officer, were held for their role in graft in a case gold smuggling in Alipurduar of North Bengal. The police recovered 15 gold bars, weighing 1kg each from them.
The consignment worth around Rs 28 crores was allegedly being smuggled from Bhutan, according to sources. This is one of the rare instances where both the army personnel and the police were caught in a case together.
The accused are Lieuten-ant Colonel Pawan Brah-ma and Sepoy Dashrath Singh of the Army Inte-lligence at Hasimara, sub-divisional police officer (Jaigaon) Anuruddha Thakur, sub-inspector of Hasimara police out post Satyendra Nath Roy and former officer-in-charge of the Hasimara police outpost Kamalendra Nar-ayan.
On Saturday, deputy inspector general (operation) Nishat Parvez infor-med that the five were booked in a case at Jaigao-n police station case over the allegation that on September 10 they had misappropriated and rece-ived illegal gratification for avoiding to take legal action against the gold smugglers whom they had detained with a consignment of gold on the same day. Sources revealed that the CID first zeroed in on Mr Thakur and his two subordinates after learning that they did not rec-ord any case about the seizure of gold consignment. During their questionning, the names of the two army personnel came to light and they were detained two.
Judging the gravity of the case the state detective agency’s top brass inform-ed the senior officials of the Mamata Banerjee government and the Eastern Command also. But senior officers at the Eastern Command have been tigh-tlipped. During the day the five arrested were produced at a district court which has remanded them in the police custody for four days. The CID is now interrogating them.
