By Roopak Goswami
Guwahati: The Directorate of Enforcement (ED), Guwahati Zonal Office, has provisionally attached three immovable properties worth around Rs 65.6 lakh in connection with a disproportionate assets case involving a Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) official and his wife.
The action was taken under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002, against Hem Chandra Borah, Deputy Chief Engineer of NFR, and his wife, Gayatree Saikia, a teacher at Bhaskar Bidyapith Higher Secondary School in Guwahati.
According to the ED, the investigation was launched on the basis of an FIR registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), AC-I, New Delhi, under the provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act. The CBI later filed a chargesheet before the competent court on March 25, 2025.
The ED alleged that during the check period between April 1, 2016, and January 17, 2021, Borah and his wife accumulated assets disproportionate to their known sources of income amounting to nearly Rs 73.76 lakh, which the agency said accounted for about 86.88 per cent of their legitimate income during the period.
Investigators further claimed that the couple adopted a systematic method to launder the alleged proceeds of crime.
Despite maintaining seven bank accounts, their combined ATM and UPI withdrawals were reportedly only Rs 1.36 lakh, leading investigators to suspect that day-to-day household expenses were met using illicit cash received as gratification.
According to the ED, the legitimate salary income was allegedly preserved in bank accounts and later routed through cheque payments for the purchase of immovable properties to project them as untainted assets.
Further investigation in the case is underway.