The COVID-19 pandemic may not have hit Assam as badly as the States beyond the northeast but has led to a rise in cases of impersonation by those looking to make a quick buck.
Over the last 48 hours, the police caught at least eight people across the State for impersonating the men in uniform and other government officials to extract money from trucks carrying essentials and shops in rural areas that open on the sly.
On Wednesday, the police in eastern Assam’s Jorhat district arrested three men who had taken fraudulence to another level – by posing as doctors assigned to disseminate awareness and test people for possible infection for a fee.
The trio had been operating for some days in villages around Jorhat town but let their guard down by getting into, the police said, the game of others of their ilk.
“We caught them from the Titabor area on the basis of public complaints. Apart from conning people by posing as doctors and showing them their photos with ambulances, they also tried to pass off as officials and seized gutkha packets to demand money from shops,” Jorhat’s Superintendent of Police Mrinal Talukdar said.
The three, identified as Diganta Neog (25), Ujjwal Bora (24) and Biswajyoti Dutta (18), were produced before a court and sent to jail.
Drug-trafficking cases
Personnel of the Border Security Force’s Guwahati Frontier on Tuesday caught two Indian nationals with 1.1 kg raw opium from Nayarhat in Cooch Behar district of West Bengal. Officials said the duo was trying to slip the consignment across to associates across the border with Bangladesh.
On April 4, the BSF personnel seized 44 kg of cannabis from Mirapara village, also in Cooch Behar district.
There have also been reports of officials pilfering essential commodities and running a racket. The Kamrup district administration has show-caused Block Development Officer Moinul Haq Choudhury, while two panchayat secretaries – Asad-uz-Zaman and Pompi Deka – have been suspended following allegations against them.