Gujarat: Over 480 ballot boxes stolen from Mehsana's old revenue office, FIR registered

However, the police are yet to find specific clues as the CCTV footage of the office, which remains locked, did not show any suspicious activity during the period mentioned in the FIR, said J S Patel, inspector of Mehsana A Division police station.


PTI | Ahmedabad | Updated: 23-09-2021 20:16 IST | Created: 23-09-2021 20:16 IST
Gujarat: Over 480 ballot boxes stolen from Mehsana's old revenue office, FIR registered
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More than 480 ballot boxes, which were last used in Gujarat's village panchayat polls held over four years back, were found stolen from a defunct revenue office in Mehsana town, police said on Thursday.

A case in this connection was registered on Tuesday. However, the police are yet to find specific clues as the CCTV footage of the office, which remains locked, did not show any suspicious activity during the period mentioned in the FIR, said J S Patel, inspector of Mehsana 'A' Division police station. ''As per the complaint given by the current mamlatdar (revenue officer), the theft took place between July 24 and August 1 this year. Although we scanned the footage of the old mamlatdar office, from where the boxes were stolen, we have not found any clue. We are trying our best to crack the case,'' he said.

The ballot boxes were made of steel and each was worth Rs 200, he said, adding that they were empty and stored in the defunct old mamlatdar office located in Oza Chawk area of Mehsana after the completion of the last gram panchayat polls in the district.

The complaint in this case was lodged on September 21 by current mamlatdar N C Rajgor, which said the old mamlatdar office in Oza Chawk is now used only for storing old revenue records and ballot boxes.

As per Rajgor's complaint, after the completion of village panchayat polls around four-and-a-half years back, the election branch of Mehsana Collectorate had kept 944 ballot boxes in this office, which remained locked all the time.

In June, when the branch sought to know how many of these boxes can be used again for the upcoming Panchayat polls, Rajgor, who sits in the new Mamlatdar office in the town, sent a report saying all the 944 boxes kept in the old office are available for use.

On July 24, Mahendra Makwana, a contractual employee, went to the old office to fetch some old revenue records and did not find anything wrong. However, when he went there on August 1 to get some other documents as instructed by Rajgor, he found that someone had entered the office after breaking the rear door and a window, the FIR said.

When Rajgor and other officials counted the boxes after reaching the spot, they learnt that 484 boxes worth Rs 96,800, out of total 944 boxes, were stolen by unidentified thieves, it added.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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