Two officials of the National Register of Citizens in Assam were arrested on Thursday for allegedly accepting bribe from a woman to enter her name in the citizenship database.
Syed Shahjahan, a field level officer at Ganeshguri NRC Sewa Kendra in Assam’s capital Dispur was arrested by the state Anti-Corruption Bureau while he was accepting Rs 10,000 from a woman identified as Kajari Ghosh Dutta, said the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption. Rahul Parashar, an assistant local registrar of citizen registration at the same NRC Sewa Kendra, was also arrested.
The directorate said the accused had complained of “technical defects” in Dutta’s application and allegedly demanded money to correct it before including her name in the final draft of the database of citizens. The Anti-Corruption Bureau took action after Dutta filed a complaint. The two officials will be produced in a special court on Friday morning.
The office of the state coordinator of the National Register of Citizens clarified that the Shahjahan and Parashar did not have any role in the process of including or excluding names from the citizenship list. It said the complainant’s claims hearing in the case was completed in May 2019 at a different venue.
“Results of the hearing have also been recorded and received in central servers during the month of May itself,” the office of the state coordinator added. “As such, the NRC officials at Ganeshguri NSK cannot influence the matter of inclusion or exclusion of the claimant/complainant of for that matter any other NRC complainant also.”
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