Guwahati, May 4 (). Six persons arrested in connection with an alleged scam of Rs 105 crore in Assam’s State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) were produced before the court of a special judge here on Thursday.
Those arrested include Congress party leaders Rajesh Joshi, Lakhinarayan Sonowal, Jayant Lahkar, Rameezuddin Ahmed, Saranga More and Rubul Ali. According to media reports, the Chief Minister’s Special Vigilance Cell arrested them on Wednesday.
Joshi is the son-in-law of suspended SCERT director Sewali Devi Sarma, while Sonowal is a retired deputy director of SCERT. The other three are employees of SCERT.
All the suspects in the case were taken into custody after a long interrogation on Wednesday morning. After this all were sent for medical examination.
According to sources, the alleged Rs 105 crore SCERT scam involves siphoning off money in the guise of providing Diploma in Elementary Education (D.E.I.Ed) courses through the Open Distance Learning (ODL) system. The alleged financial breach allegedly took place between the years 2017 and 2022.
According to sources, Sarma gave most of the contracts to his relatives, including his in-laws. The GST numbers of many of these companies were fake.
Sarma is alleged to have first transferred money from the company’s bank accounts to the accounts of other employees, and then withdrawn money from their accounts.
Apart from this, it has also come to light that he has done D.E.Ed. for Open Distance Learning. course by opening 347 centers which are 288 more than those authorized by the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE).
Fake centers allegedly made up most of these. The investigation is still going on. Estimates provide more information about the type of abuse and the number of others involved.
FZ/ANM
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