5 held in Home Guard salary scam

G B Nagar: With the arrest of five persons including the present divisional commandant of home guard department, assistant company commander and three platoon commanders, the Gautam Buddh Nagar police claimed to have busted the infamous home guard salary scam, said police officials on Wednesday.

Cops said that the whole scam was orchestrated under the supervision of present divisional commander Ram Narayan Chaurasiya, the then district commander home guard in Gautam Buddh Nagar.

Apart from present divisional commander Ram Narayan Chaurasiya, assistant company commander Satish (35) and platoon commanders Shailendra (30), Satyaveer (38) and Montu (32) have also been arrested in connection with the case.

"Chaurasiya was promoted as divisional commandant in October and was currently posted in Aligarh district," said cops.

Vaibhav Krishna, Senior Superintendent of police, Gautam Buddh Nagar said the fraud was ongoing in the district since 2017 with an involvement of around Rs 4 crores in the scam.

"During probe, it came to light that salaries for around 1,327 days of 114 home guards posted in the district were withdrawn by showing up them for work after tampering the muster rolls (attendance logs) for two months -- May and June this year, thus causing a fraud of Rs 7.07 lakh. This is the data for only two months but we suspect that the fraud was ongoing from past two years causing a loss worth crores to the government," said Krishna.

Detailing over the modus operandi, the officer said that the accused persons produced fake muster rolls and fraudulently used stamps and signatures of SHOs and other senior cops to get them approved.