By Bhupen Goswami
Guwahati : Two Indian Forest Service (IFS) officials, including Assam’s Diganta Gogoi have been arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Sunday for bribing an official of environment ministry.Diganta Gogoi was posted in Port Blair and the other arrested officer- Tarun Johri was posted in Arunachal Pradesh. Both of them were posted as chief conservators of forest. They were arrested by the CBI for bribing Rs. 20 thousands to an official of the environment ministry. Earlier, CBI on Saturday night raided the residence of IFS Diganta Gogoi in Guwahati and seized various documents related to the case.A CBI officer said that Johri had contacted the environment ministry officer and asked him to get the approval of the ministry of environment and forests for making changes in the date in Gogoi’s service record as a chief conservator. “We had received a complaint from the MoEF official after the officer received the bribe. The CBI teams arrested Johri from Delhi while Gogoi was arrested from Port Blair. Searches were conducted at the Delhi residence of Johri. Another team conducted searches at Gogoi’s residences in Guwahati and Port Blair. We have registered a case. Investigation is on,” HT quoted a CBI spokesperson as saying. Johri, who was arrested late Saturday night, was produced before a city court on Sunday. The court remanded him to judicial custody till March 19. Gogoi, arrested on Sunday from Port Blair, will be brought to Delhi on a two-day transit remand on Monday. The two seniors IFS officers are from the 2001 AGMUT (Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Mizoram and Union Territories) cadre. Johri was the conservator of forests in the Delhi forest department. CBI officers said Johri had offered to help his friend and batchmate, Gogoi by bribing the ministry official.
