Ghaziabad: The Ghaziabad police Wednesday suspended a woman station house officer of Link Road police station along with a sub-inspector and five constables for their alleged involvement in siphoning off ₹70 lakh cash from the amount recovered from two suspects.
The police identified the suspect cops as SHO Laxmi Chauhan, sub-inspector Naveen Kumar and constables Bacchu Singh, Faraz, Dheeraj Bhardwaj, Saurabh Kumar and Sachin Kumar.
The police said the issue came to fore on Tuesday night when the two suspects, Rajeev Sachaan and Amir, were arrested by police and brought to Link Road police station. The arrests were made by the police in connection with an FIR lodged by an ATM cash replenishment company on April 22 against its employee, Sachaan, who had allegedly fed only a part of the cash into the ATMs and escaped with the rest.
According to the cash replenishment company, the stolen amount was to the tune of about ₹3.5 crore, though the initial FIR filed by them stated a loss of ₹72.5 lakh, police said. The police said the prime suspect who figured in the FIR lodged in April was Sachaan, while another man, Amir, was later added as his accomplice.
“After the two men were arrested on Tuesday night in connection with that case, Sachaan told us that about ₹55 lakh cash was recovered from him while Amir told us that an amount of about ₹60-70 lakh was recovered from him. But the seizure memo prepared by the Link Road police stated a recovery of only ₹45,81,500 cash. we got suspicious and launched an inquiry into the whole arrests and seizure. We corroborated the statements of the suspects with the sequence of events as narrated by them,” Shlok Kumar, superintendent of police (city), said.
{{/usCountry}}“After the two men were arrested on Tuesday night in connection with that case, Sachaan told us that about ₹55 lakh cash was recovered from him while Amir told us that an amount of about ₹60-70 lakh was recovered from him. But the seizure memo prepared by the Link Road police stated a recovery of only ₹45,81,500 cash. we got suspicious and launched an inquiry into the whole arrests and seizure. We corroborated the statements of the suspects with the sequence of events as narrated by them,” Shlok Kumar, superintendent of police (city), said.
{{/usCountry}}“They told us that while they were being taken away to the police station after their arrests, the vehicle carrying them had stopped near Mohan Nagar and a private car had arrived there and the car occupant collected some of the recovered cash from the policemen. We checked the CCTV footage from the spot mentioned by the suspects and found that a private car had indeed arrived there. Prima facie, the statements of the suspects corroborated the sequence of events and the SHO along with six others were suspended. An FIR may also be lodged against the police personnel in this connection,” Kumar said.
The SHO did not take calls seeking her comment on the issue.
The police said they are also trying to identify the private car which had collected the cash and was captured by the CCTV cameras.
“After the two arrests on Tuesday night, the seven suspended police personnel were named in the seizure memo. During the questioning of Sachaan and Amir, the senior officers got suspicious about the recovered amount. Hence, the seven police personnel were suspended. We are conducting an inquiry and more details will emerge,” Sudhir Kumar Singh, senior superintendent of police, said.