TURA:
Goalpara district police of Assam have busted a huge racket in fake registration of vehicles involving the District Transport Officer of East Garo Hills in Meghalaya and arrested the officer in a special operation conducted on Sunday.
A team of Assam Police led by Goalpara Circle Inspector Siraj Ingti and Manimoy Tamuly, Officer in-charge of the Agia Police Station, led a team to Williamnagar and took into custody the District Transport Officer Genekelly G. Momin.
Preliminary investigation by Assam Police has led to identification of as many as 30 vehicles that were provided with false documents and investigators believe this is just the tip of the iceberg in the scam.
“A strong nexus was in operation running a business of false documentation of various kinds of vehicles. These vehicles have basically failed registration and the nexus was to re-register the vehicles in Meghalaya by tampering with the chassis number and other important things,” informed Manimoy Tamuly, OC, Agia Police Station.
He revealed that it was on the basis of a source information that they picked up a man on May 4, identified as Gulam Ali, who was arrested after it was found that his vehicle documents and engine number did not match. Later, two more vehicles were found in a similar condition.
Assam Police registered a case in Agia Police Station under sections 120B/379/411/471/468/420 and started their investigations which led them to the doorsteps of the East Garo Hills DTO. The DTO was placed under arrest on Sunday.
Goalpara Superintendent of Police V. V. Rakesh Reddy P. told media persons that, “During the interrogation of Gulam Ali, he stated that with the help of the East Garo Hills DTO they were preparing false documents for vehicles. We are investigating the matter and already we found three vehicles and five registration cards from his possession which have been seized.”
Meanwhile, a deliberate attempt to destroy evidence in the DTO office in Williamnagar after a fire broke out recently is being looked into by police.
“We came to know that the DTO office recently caught fire, so we have to investigate whether the incident was part of the conspiracy, including how many documents were burned in the incident,” said Reddy. He said that the racket involves many more people and in the course of the investigation arrests will be made.
“We have already listed around thirty vehicles whose documents were falsified by tampering with the engine numbers and other things”, added Tamuly.
Goalpara SP Reddy has expressed his appreciation to the Meghalaya Police for their co-operation during the arrest of the DTO.
It is also worth mentioning that the arrested DTO had previously been suspended for alleged illegal collection of money from vehicles in the same East Garo Hills district while working as a transport checker. Strong political nexus is alleged to have helped him get reinstated and quickly rise up the ladder to the position of a district transport officer.