Barak Valley Coal Scam: CID arrests 5 senior government officials

On February 12, 2018, during the question hour in legislative assembly, Chandra Mohan Patowary speaking on behalf of state home ministry had announced a CID probe into a Coal Syndicate operating in the state. CID after its investigation and interrogation have arrested five senior level government officials.

Circle Officer: Manjur Elahi Babrbuiya, Income Tax officer: Sajal Das, Income Tax inspector: Anjan Jyoti Bora, Enforcement Inspector Silchar: Biswajit Bhattacharjee and Babul Mandal, assistant inspector Enforcement Department are the five government officials CID took under custody.

Source close to the development informed us that CID had all five in their radar since last few days and was just waiting for that one breakthrough. After getting that breakthrough evidence CID called all the officials to report to the department’s Guwahati office. Yesterday the officials reached CID’s Guwahati office and they were interrogated for long nine hours after which they were taken into custody. The source also informed us that the CID has confiscated many controversial documents too.

The coal scam in Assam is going on for a long time now, in the wee hours truck loaded with Coal enters Barak Valley, majority of those trucks are always overloaded. They ignore GST transportation guidelines and at times even use fake GST chalan. The coal movement in the area was under the purview of a syndicate, which was formed in November last year. This illegal coal trade was at its peak in December and that’s when the media started reporting the scam and Assam government started taking actions.

It is assumed that this illegal coal trade is a scam worth many crores and the officials have already made a lot of money. But then there is a saying, “better late than never” so well done CID…