EOU raids premises of millionaire Bihar cop

Apart from the vehicles and other assets, Dhiraj owns a two-storey building worth crores at Mahavir Colony under Beur police station in Patna and another building at his ancestral village in Muzaffarpur under Sahar police station of Bhojpur district.

The Economic Offences Unit (EOU) on Tuesday raided the houses and business establishments of Bihar policemen’s association president constable Narendra Kumar Dhiraj and found disproportionate assets (DA) worth crores, officials said.

Security personnel outside the residence of constable Narendra Kumar Dhiraj during a raid conducted by EOU in Patna on Tuesday. (PTI)

Over 200 policemen raided nine locations, including Patna, Bhojpur and Arwal districts and found DA worth ₹9.47 crore, besides other things, like land deeds, passbooks, bank lockers and investment-related papers, till the time of filing of this report. “The investigation is on and more details will be available soon,” said an official.

ADG (EOU) N H Khan said, “Based on the information, our officials raided his houses and found properties disproportionate to his known source of income. A case of DA has been lodged under Sections 13(1) and 13(2) of the Disproportionate Assets Act, 1988, against eight persons, including Dhiraj and his brothers Surendra Kumar Singh, Shashi Bhusan Singh, Shyam Bihari Singh, Birendra Singh, Bijendra Kumar Bimal, Ashok Kumar and nephew Dharmendra Kumar.”

The EOU unearthed four residential plots, an agriculture plot and a five-storey building owned by Bijendra and 10 residential-agriculture plots, besides four and five-storey buildings owned by Surendra in Bhojpur. Shyam Bihari owns a mall-cum-residential building.

As per the officials, the preliminary probe suggested that Dhiraj and his associates bought these properties with ill-gotten money.

Narendra joined services on May 13, 1988, and earned about ₹1.5 crore as salary during his 33 years and two months of the service period. The Vigilance Investigation Bureau (VIB) suspects that the constable and his family have hidden a huge amount outside the state.

“When people are finding it difficult to buy even a single car, this constable, currently attached with Patna police, managed to buy 20,” said a senior officer, while alleging that he earned this much money by misusing his official position.

Apart from the vehicles and other assets, Dhiraj, who turned out to be a crorepati, owns a two-storied building at Mahavir Colony under Beur police station in Patna worth crores and another building at his ancestral village in Muzaffarpur under Sahar police station of Bhojpur district.

During the investigation, the EOU found that Dhiraj’s family had only four-bigha ancestral land before he joined the police force, an official said.

Meanwhile, no action has been taken so far against the accused policeman.