Ranchi: Acting on an anonymous tip-off, a police team arrested 14 cops along with six civilians for gambling from a rented house in the Misir Gonda locality on Saturday night and seized Rs 3.61 lakhs from them.
Opposition BJP took an opportunity about the incident to sharpen its attack against the Hemant Soren-led coalition government on Sunday with the state party leader Babulal Marandi saying that the chief minister is “leading the team of gamblers in the state”.Ruling JMM was also caught on the wrong foot over the incident and its central general secretary JMM general secretary Supriyo Bhattacharya said, “We will gather details of the incident and come out with our party’s views on the allegations Marandi raised on Monday.”
Police said the team was formed by an order of the SSP (Ranchi), Chandan Kumar Sinha after he received the information from anonymous sources, and the arrested cops belonged to the District Police, Jharkhand Jaguar, Jharkhand Armed Police and Special Branch. They, however, refused to divulge their identities or their places of posting but said the personnel were released on bail after registering a case against them.
The six others, who were arrested along with the policemen, are residents of the locality who hailed from weak financial backgrounds, police sources said.
SSP Sinha said, “We will issue show cause notices to the arrested personnel and start departmental proceedings if their replies are not satisfactory. We will take the due course of law against them.”
Senior police officers refused to comment further on the incident but sources in some of the stations initially said the accused cops were trapped after a rivalry among the policemen but they changed the stand in the evening.
Taking potshots over the development, state BJP president Babulal Marandi launched a direct attack on chief minister Hemant Soren, saying the police department was tight-lipped about the incident because some of the arrested personnel were posted in the Chief Minister’s Office (CMO) and claimed that they might even have been staying in the official residence of Soren.
“Those policemen were not only gambling but also facilitating others in the crime. It is worth mentioning that some of the arrested police personnel are engaged in the CM’s office. There is an attempt to cover up this fact,” Marandi posted on X.
The BJP leader further said, “If the mukhiya” (referring to the CM) is involved in corrupt practices then those working under him will continue to get the oxygen to commit crime. When the boss is gambling with the state every day, then why not his disciples?” He added that it was essential to find out the money trails seized from the gambling incident.