By IANS,
Guwahati : Three senior bureaucrats have been arrested in Assam on corruption charges. Two of the arrests were made by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), officials said here Thursday.
B.C. Dhiman, deputy general manager of the government-owned National Building Construction Corporation (NBCC), was arrested on charges of trying to bribe a CBI official to downplay investigations into a massive financial scam relating to road constructions in Guwahati in the last six years.
Based on interrogation and confessional statements by Dhiman, CBI sleuths arrested NBCC Additional General Manager P.K. Mittal. Both the arrests were made in the last two days.
“There were lots of irregularities in road construction works carried out by the NBCC in Guwahati and we hope the CBI investigations would be able to unravel the scam and help in punishing the guilty,” said Robin Bordoloi, ruling Congress party legislator representing Guwahati.
CBI officials said they have got more leads into the scam and could possibly arrest a few more people.
The CBI’s Guwahati office has registered a case under Section 12 of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1998 against Dhiman and Mittal.
The NBCC is also engaged in the fencing project along the India-Bangladesh border.
Another senior Assam government official Ritendra Nath Sarma was arrested by police Tuesday on alleged corruption charges.
Sarma, an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer, was arrested after a businessman filed a case accusing him of floating tenders in several firms to procure contracts and other corruption charges.
“It is a shame that so many senior government officials are in police or CBI custody on corruption charges. This reflects the amount of corruption going on in Assam,” a senior leader of the main opposition Asom Gana Parishad said.