A fire broke out at the District Commandant Home Guard Office in Gautam Buddh Nagar in the early hours of Tuesday, allegedly destroying the salary muster rolls of the Home Guard.
On November 13, the Noida police had unearthed a salary scam allegedly running into crores in the Home Guard department.
Noida SSP Vaibhav Krishna said it seemed like a criminal act as only the salary papers were destroyed in the room. “An FIR has been lodged and a probe has been launched to find the cause of the fire,” he said.
The scam is related to fraudulent withdrawal of salaries of several home guards in the district who reported on duty only 15 to 20 days in a month. An FIR was registered against unnamed officials for fraudulent withdrawal of salaries of the personnel.
Vineet Jaiswal, SP (City) Noida, who is investigating the case, told The Hindu that the lock was broken in the Surajpur office of District Commandant Home Guard.
“The records were in a trunk. There is no sign of fire on the body of the trunk. It seems somebody unlocked it and burnt the salary muster roll up to 2014.”
Full salary withdrawn
Mr. Jaiswal had unearthed the scam when he found a discrepancy of ₹7.5 lakh in the salaries of home guards posted in seven police stations of the districts over a period of 45 days.
“The sample suggested that it was a big scam and other districts also opened similar inquiries. We registered an FIR but didn’t reveal the names as it was a matter of investigation.” Mr. Jaiswal said the home guards were paid on a daily basis.
“Their salaries are calculated by higher officials of the unit but are countersigned by the Station House Officer. In this case, the signatures and stamps were found to be forged,” he said.
He added that the fire would not impact the outcome too much as the investigation officer had acquired salary documents of the last year a couple of days back.
“It would only limit our knowledge of when it all started and the amount swindled,” he said.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath took serious note of the incident and directed the district officials to take prompt action and arrest the culprits.
