Former Tripura chief secretary in police remand for PWD scam

Former Tripura chief secretary Yashpal Singh, who is a key accused in a multi-crore PWD scam,

was on Wednesday remanded to police custody for four days by a local court.

He was arrested from Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh on Monday and brought here on transit remand.

West district and session court judge Sabyasachi Datta Purkayastha remanded Singh to police custody on Wednesday. The

government advocate Ratan Datta had sought police custody for Singh for ten days.

The Chief Judicial Magistrate of Ghaziabad allowed the transit remand and Singh was brought back to state by the

Tripura police crime branch during the day. Inspector General (Law and Order) Puneet Rastogi said

the former chief secretary had been evading arrest for almost five months. The Tripura police team had been carrying out

raids for over a month in Ghaziabad. A police official said that Singh was detained from

IRS Apartments at Indirapuram in Ghaziabad on Monday and brought to Indirapuram police station for verification. He was

arrested after completing the formalities. A team of Tripura police led by crime branch deputy

superintendent of police Ajay Kumar Das had arrested the former chief secretary 128 days after being booked in the

multi-crore PWD scam, the official said. Singh was absconding since October 13 after being

booked in the West Agartala police station. The Tripura police had last year issued an arrest

warrant against former PWD minister Badal Choudhury, former PWD engineer-in-chief Sunil Bhowmik, besides Singh, who had

served as the chief secretary during the previous Left Front government, in connection with the more than Rs 600-crore scam

on implementation of projects in the state during the Left Front regime.

Choudhury, who was a minister for four terms in the previous Left Front regime, was arrested from Agartala on

October 21, days before Bhowmik was taken into custody. Both were, however, released on bail as police failed

to file a chargesheet against them.

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