Jorhat police have arrested a former BJP leader and businessman in upper Assam’s Jorhat district for alleged bank fraud.
Jorhat based businessman Gajanand Munda has been arrested on Thursday on charges of duping several persons by allegedly arranging loans from branches of two nationalized banks here.
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He was remanded to three-day police custody after being produced in the court of chief judicial magistrate (Jorhat) Rani Bodo, this evening.
Munda has been arrested under sections 120 B (Criminal conspiracy), 420 (Cheating), 406 (Criminal breach of trust), 471 (Forging documents or records), 506 (Criminal Intimidation) and 34 (Common Intention) of the IPC and a case (number 2615/2018) has been registered in the Jorhat Police Station on October 25.
The FIR against him was lodged by Nekib Ahmed, a resident of Bongaon of Kakajan area in the district. The arrest was made by a police team led by Rajendra Bora, circle Inspector of Mariani Circle of the district with assistance of Kamargaon police, Golaghat district.
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A police source said Munda was apprehended from the National Highway-37 from Kamargaon when he was travelling to Guwahati from here in his vehicle.
According to Ahmed Munda had arranged loans for him from two banks in 2014. In the first instance he paid Rs 2 lakh into the account of Ahmed.
He took out another loan of Rs 20 lakh from another bank after asking Ahmed to sign on some papers and also deposited that into the account of Ahmed.
The amount, was, however, transferred by Munda to an account in Rajasthan and he promised Ahmed that he would repay this amount.
When he failed to repay, the bank sought recovery and issued a notice to him following which Ahmed lodged the complaint with the police.
This case is expected to open up a can of worms against Munda. Munda, who had unsuccessfully contested the Assembly polls in 2016 from Teok as an independent candidate, was a former functionary of Jorhat district unit of BJP.
The Jorhat police have drawn a lot of flak for not acting in his case. For the past four years he had been provided two armed Assam Police PSOs for alleged threat to his life, which raised questions in several quarters regarding the kind of threat posed to him. Yesterday, the Assam Police reportedly issued a directive to withdraw the PSOs.
Munda two years back had even hired two armed private security guards from outside Assam. Ahmed in his complaint had alleged that Munda boasted of having close links with a top police official and this may have been the reason why he had been assigned PSOs for so long.