Yogi seeks report as home guard logs burnt amid probe

Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath has taken a serious view of the fire that broke out at the district commandment home guard office in Gautam Buddh Nagar district of UP late Monday, burning attendance records that could be crucial to the probe that’s underway into the state's home guard salary scam.

Adityanath directed a forensic team to urgently inspect the site, and also asked the district magistrate of Gautam Buddha Nagar and the senior superintendent of police (SSP) to ensure the accused are arrested by Tuesday evening, said a Bharatiya Janata Party spokesperson. Both the chief secretary of home guards as well as the director general of the home guard department were asked to submit a detailed report.

Late Monday, a fire broke out at the head office of UP home guard, destroying muster rolls containing details of attendance records of the personnel. This comes at a time when an enquiry had been launched last week by the UP government with the SSP of Gautam Buddh Nagar Vaibhav Krishna confirming that he was approached in July with allegations that fake attendance of personnel across many police stations was being recorded in registers to withdraw salary commensurate to the recorded attendance while the force would only be disbursed according to their actual attendance and the rest being pocketed by the officials involved.

Reports have suggested that the amount of inflated salary withdrawals could run into crores, raising the spectre of a full-blown scam.

A voluntary arm of the Indian paramilitary force which provides additional help to the police, home guards are paid according to the number of days they have worked. In October, the UP government had decided to de-roster 25,000 home guards after a Supreme Court mandated increase in daily allowance for home guards from Rs 500 to Rs 672 stoked fears that the state would not be able to bear the additional wage burden.