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| Wednesday, 3 December 2003 |
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Former Bombay police chief arrested in multi-million dollar scam BOMBAY, Tuesday (AFP) Former Bombay police chief R.S. Sharma was Monday arrested for alleged involvement in a 662 million dollar legal document scam, police sources said. Sharma, who retired Sunday as the city's top cop, was ordered to go on leave last month after allegations of his role in the scam which has already seen the arrests of other senior police officers and local politicians. Sources said Sharma was to be taken by a special investigation team to the western Indian city of Pune, 180 kilometers (112 miles) southeast of Bombay for further questioning. Before his arrest, Sharma was interrogated at least five times by the special team, which has meanwhile submitted a report on his alleged role in the scam to the high court. "I do not know the details of his arrest, but we are told that Sharma has been arrested and being taken to Pune," a top police source said. Sharma was last month replaced by P.S. Pasricha, a traffic policeman and former commissioner of the state intelligence department, as the city police commissioner. Following allegations of his role in the scam, Sharma was ordered by the state government to go on leave just days before he was due to retire on November 30. He was questioned last month by special investigators trying to uncover links between the police and Abdul Karim Telgi, a former travel agent and the alleged brain behind a business of counterfeiting stamp paper, which in India has to be used for legal documents. The fraud is estimated to have cost the state exchequer about 30 billion rupees (662.8 million dollars) in lost revenue from genuine stamp paper. Sharma was commissioner of police in the western city of Pune when the authorities first registered a case in June last year against Telgi for bribing politicians and police in the state of Maharashtra, of which Bombay is the capital. An internal state police inquiry last year had indicted Sharma for "dereliction of duty in the probe against Telgi". |
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