Guwahati News Desk: CBI teams conducted surprise checks at Food Corporation of India (FCI) godowns in Ramnagar of Cachar districts and then Badarpurghat of Karimganj districts.
The search was conducted based on complaints of misappropriation of food grains and manipulation of records by the depots’ officials.
On March 19 the first check was conducted at the FCI depot, Ramnagar, at around 10.15 a.m.
Niraj Kumar Singh, inspector of police, CBI, ACB, Shillong; Mukesh Kumar, inspector of police, CBI, ACB, Shillong; Shiv Kumar Singh, sub-inspector of police, CBI, ACB, Shillong; and F.A. Sangma, PC, CBI, ACB, Shillong were present during the search. But they found no staff in the entire depot campus on that day.
Instead, they were flabbergasted as they did not found any register at the depot’s entry gate, non-operational condition of most of the CCTV cameras in the sheds, absence of stack cards and palla bags in stacks of the depot’s sheds, absence of depot online system at the depot’s weighbridge and unavailability of the updated master ledger, stack ledger and central master ledger at the depot.
On the other hands, Pradeep Das, CBI, ACB, Shillong; Anil Kumar Rai, CBI, ACB, Shillong; and Shantanu Paul, manager (EM), FCI (RO), Shillong carried out the surprise check at FCI depot, Badarpurghat at around 12.15 p.m. on the same day.
During the inspection, it was revealed that there was a shortage of 948 bags of rice in shed-1, while in shed-2 there was a shortage of 523 bags of rice. The number of wheat bags was found to be 1,127 whereas the number as per the records should have been 1,172.
The Barak Democratic Front (BDF), a political party formed in Barak Valley, demanded a CBI investigation into the matter as its convenor Pradip Datta Ray claimed that large-scale corruption is taking place in the FCI divisional office in Silchar.