Confiscate assets of guilty officials: HC

The Gauhati High Court has asked the Assam government to initiate necessary action for confiscation of assets of as many as 16 senior officers named by the Criminal Investigation Department....

The Gauhati High Court has asked the Assam government to initiate necessary action for confiscation of assets of as many as 16 senior officers named by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the Assam Police in a multi-crore rupee teacher appointment scandal that took place from 1989 to 2007.

The High Court has also asked the state government to issue prosecution sanctions against the 16 officers,including four former directors,within the next couple of weeks. The High Court orders came in the wake of an investigation carried out by the CID under supervision of the court which had earlier registered a suo motu case in this regard.

A Division Bench of the High Court,comprising Justice Ranjan Kumar Gogoi and Justice Biplab Kumar Sarma,which has been monitoring the investigations,also asked the Secretary and Director of Elementary Education,Government of Assam,to submit all the documents relating to the cases which the officials had so far stated to be missing. The court has fixed January 22 for submitting the documents.

The scandal relates to appointment of hundreds of school teachers against a handful of vacancies in the Elementary Education Department in two districts,namely Lakhimpur and Dhemaji,from1989 to 2007. Interestingly,while the officials named allegedly appointed as many as 752 persons against just 35 sanctioned posts of teachers in the two districts in 1989,altogether 717 persons continued to draw salaries till 2007 despite the fact that the government had terminated their services in 2002.