From Bhupen Goswami
Guwahathi: The Rs 501.40 crore Minority Scholarship Scam in Assam has been handed over to the CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) and the CBI has started investigation. Addressing the media here today, Assam Minority Development Board chairman Muminul Awal said, “I had written to Union Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi in September this year requesting him to hand over the scholarship scam of minority students in Assam to the CBI. On November 8, 2020, Naqvi handed over the scam to the CBI. Minority scholarship scams in Assam as well as Bihar, Jharkhand and Punjab were also handed over to the CBI. The case was registered against the scam in various police stations of Assam. On the direction of Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal, CID (Department of Criminal Investigation) was investigating the scam, but was running very slowly and that is why union Minority Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi has handed over the CBI as per the directions of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to immediately investigate the CBI. A CBI source said, the CBI has directed the PMO to complete the probe beyond the commencement of the Assam Assembly elections. The CBI today is doing all the documents for the day in the scholarship scam of minority students. It is important to mention that 27 people have been arrested by the police after a scam in scholarship amount of minority school students in Assam came to the fore. So far, a scam of Rs. 150 crore has been detected. But police say the real amount will be known only after interrogation of the accused. Despite everything being digitally, it is surprising to come out with a large-scale scam. In Assam, last year also, the government had accepted one such scam. In Assam, CID has arrested at least 27 people from four districts of the state in the case. The accused also includes a teacher besides four head masters. The scam has been in distribution of funds allocated during 2018-19 and 2019-20. Based on the complaint of director, Assam Minority Welfare Board and the nodal officer of the said scholarship scheme, Mahmood Hassan, the case was initiated and the accused have been arrested by conducting raids at various places in the state. A statement issued by CID in Guwahati said that based on the evidence found during the investigation, 27 persons have been arrested so far in collaboration with local police from Goalpara, Darrang, Kamrup and Dhubri districts. In this case, a case has been registered under section 120 (b), 406, 409, 419, 420, 468 and 471 of IPC. “Six persons have been remanded to judicial custody while the remaining accused are on police remand for four days,” says CID IG Surendra Kumar. The CID team has also seized photos of 217 students, 173 applications for scholarships and 11 bank passbooks in addition to three laptops from the possession of the accused. A CID official investigating the case points out that the involvement of three owners of the customer service centre, 10 middlemen, a chairman of the School Management Committee and three electronic data processors in the arrested persons shows that the scam was being carried out through an organised gang. Investigating officials say that under the scheme, students are verified at two levels for scholarships. The first verification takes place at the school level and the second at the district level. But the people involved in the scam managed to sneak into the system and scam by making a dent in the login and password of headmasters. A senior CENTRAL Bureau of Investigation official said that when the CBI is examining these documents, it came to the fore that the scam was done by calling a Kendriya Vidyalaya in Assam as a school in Bihar. In this scam, a Kendriya Vidyalaya at Nazira in Sivasagar district of Assam has been given a school in Bihar. Not only that, the school is included in the list of six different districts of Bihar. In the name of the said school, scholarship amount has been recovered in the name of 39 beneficiaries in Bihar. A senior CENTRAL Bureau of Investigation official said, “All those whose names are registered as students of this school are bogus. There are no names of those students in a Kendriya Vidyalaya register at Nazira in Sivasagar district of Assam. However, the students residing in Darbhanga, Muzaffarpur, Purya and East Champaran districts have been given the scholarship amount by telling them students of this Kendriya Vidyalaya. A credible CBI source told media persons that a team of CBI officials in Guwahati today reviewed the scam at the CID office and decided to initiate a probe with CID from the joint team. The scam is prevalent in Morigaon, Nagaon, Barpeta, Dhubri, Golaghat, Golpara, Darang, Karimganj and Kamrup districts.