Two NRC officials arrested on charge of accepting bribe

Guwahati (Assam): The Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) has arrested two National Register of Citizens (NRC) officials for allegedly accepting a bribe to include the name of a woman in the NRC draft.

"Field Level Officer of Dispur 8 at Ganeshguri NRC Sewa Kendra, Syed Shahjahan (48) has been caught red-handed by an Assam ACB team while accepting a bribe amount of Rs 10,000 from complainant Kajari Ghosh Dutta of Ananda Nagar, Dispur," a release by the Superintendent of Police, Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption, said on Thursday.

Rahul Parasar (27), Assistant Local Registrar of Citizen Registration (LRCR) of the same NRC Sewa Kendra, has also been arrested for his alleged involvement in the case, it said.

The woman had approached the ACB after she was allegedly asked yesterday to pay Rs 10,000 for including her name in the NRC draft.

The accused had highlighted some technical defects in her application and demanded the bribe to rectify them before entering her name in the final NRC draft, the release said.

"The ACB team laid a trap to nab the accused and caught them red-handed. The bribed money and the connected documents have been seized by the team from the office of the NRC Sewa Kendra," it said.

The NRC officials have been booked under section 7 (a) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 (as amended in 2018) and will be presented before a special court today.

The NRC containing the names of Indian citizens, which was prepared in 1951, is being updated in Assam to weed out the illegal immigrants. The final NRC will be published on July 31.

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