BOMBAY, 20 November 2003 — A new chief took control of Bombay’s police yesterday, vowing to clean up a force tainted by a $660 million fraud scandal, one of India’s biggest.
More than 100 people across several states, including police, politicians and government officials, have been arrested over the ambitious scam involving forged government legal papers used to seal transactions such as property and business contracts.
“Our image has been sullied but the whole force is not bad,” Bombay’s new Police Commissioner, Parvinder Singh Pasricha, told reporters.
The decision to appoint Dr. Pasricha, a 1970 Indian Police Service batch officer was taken upon the return of Nationalist Congress Party President Sharad Pawar from New York yesterday. Maharashtra state Chief minister Sushil Kumar Shinde along with Deputy Chief Minsiter Chaggan Bhujbal and Sharad Pawar met late in the evening at the state guest house and after a marathon two-hour session finalized the name of Dr. Pasricha.
Asked on what basis Pasricha was selected Shinde said that he was a senior IPS officer, non-controversial, had served in the city for more than 15 years, managed the chaotic traffic of the city and had a doctorate in traffic management, which will help ease the traffic problems in the city along with its law and order problems.
Pasricha said he will work hard to rebuild the morale of the city police force, which has hit a low ebb after the stamp scam and arrest of several police officers.
So far, at least six policemen, including a senior Bombay officer, have been arrested and charged with protecting Telgi and taking millions of rupees as bribes.
Outgoing Police Commissioner R.S. Sharma has been transferred just two weeks before retirement after a confidential police report on allegations he was involved in the case.
So far, $660 million worth of the paper, known as stamp paper, have been found across nine states, but police and prosecutors say the real figure could be 10 times that.
Police say the mastermind of the nearly decade-old scam was former fruit-seller Abdul Karim Telgi, 43, who has been in jail in Karnataka state for two years awaiting trial, and suspect government printers also helped him.
In his home district in Karnataka’s northwest, Telgi has something of a Robin Hood image and is known for giving money and clothes to the poor, donating funds for churches, temples and mosques and helping struggling locals with wedding costs. Telgi denied printing and selling fake stamp paper.
In a surprising development, the Central Bureau of Investigations (CBI) in Ahmedabad obtained a “transfer warrant” from the judicial magistrate to take the custody of Telgi from a Bangalore jail.
A CBI source told Arab News that Telgi will be taken to Delhi from Bangalore within two days.
