The Hindu : Front Page : Three-day CBI custody for Assam Minister, associate

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Thursday, Jun 05, 2008
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Three-day CBI custody for Assam Minister, associate

Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI: A court here on Wednesday remanded sacked Assam Education Minister Ripon Bora and his associate Ramesh Maheshwari to three-day custody of the Central Bureau of Investigation.

The two were arrested at a guesthouse in South Delhi on Tuesday when they allegedly tried to bribe a CBI official investigating a murder case against the Minister.

Additional Sessions Judge R.K. Yadav remanded them till June 7 saying the agency had to complete the missing links and collect facts and circumstantial evidence from Guwahati.

The CBI had alleged that Mr. Bora, Mr. Maheshwari and a journalist, Mukul Pathak, who was arrested at Guwahati airport on Tuesday, had conspired to bribe Deputy Superintendent of Police A. B. Gupta, probing a murder case against Mr. Bora.

Mr. Bora had asked Mr. Gupta to go to a guesthouse at Sunder Nagar in South Delhi on Tuesday. When the officer arrived, he asked Mr. Maheshwari to bring Rs.10 lakh kept in the car outside the hotel. The CBI arrested the two when they allegedly tried to escape after realising something was amiss.

In 2000, tribal leader Daniel Topno of the All-Assam Tea Tribe Students’ Association, was killed nearly a kilometre away from his house at Gohpur in Sonitpur district of Assam. While Mr. Bora was a suspect in the murder, the State Criminal Investigation Department had given him a clean chit in the case.

Daniel’s brother, Santosh Topno, had then moved the Gauhati High Court seeking a CBI investigation. The High Court ordered the CBI to register a case and probe Mr. Bora’s role in July 2005.

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