‘Suspended ADGP Amrit Paul innocent’

Team Udayavani, Dec 15, 2022, 12:51 PM IST

Bengaluru: Suspended Karnataka ADGP Amrit Paul, arrested in connection with Police Sub-Inspector (PSI) recruitment scam is innocent claimed his daughter Nuhar Bansal.

In a letter to media on Thursday, Nuhar Bansal maintained her father is undergoing imprisonment for the past five months and the court has rejected her bail petition.

Alleging inconsistencies in the charge-sheet, she said that an innocent man is in jail for more than 150 days. If this is any indication, it seems that the investigating authorities are neither sincere about punishing the culprits nor interested in ensuring that the innocent do not suffer.

“Amrit Paul is an efficient and honest officer. Amrit Paul’s family does not know why he is in jail. The family is struggling to cope with the devastating emotional, physical, and financial stress of this crisis.

“He is a 56-year-old sole breadwinner of a family of seven, including his 80-year-old parents, and his three children, one of whom is a 12-year-boy. His bank accounts have been frozen since July 2022, accumulating crippling EMI penalties and forcing the family into surmounting debt.”

All the allegations, she claimed, are exclusively based only and only on the voluntary statement of the co-accused DySP Shanthakumar without any corroborative evidence in the form of eye witnesses, CCTV footages, text/email messages, phone records, money trails, seizure and recovery reports or any other valid corroborating statements.

With regard to the allegation that Paul has received Rs 1.35 crore from Shantakumar, there is absolutely no evidence to support that he had ever asked for or took any money whatsoever by Shantakumar, she said.

The investigations had shown that the ADGP had allegedly received a cut of Rs 1.35 crore from candidates to PSI posts. The CID had seized Rs 41 lakh from his aide and benami Shambhulinga Swamy.

Amrit Paul, who worked as ADGP of the recruitment department, had allegedly allowed his junior DySP Shanthakumar and team to commit a scandal in recruitment of 545 posts. The officers attached to the Recruitment Division Sunitha Bai, RPI Manjunath and guards have recorded their statements confirming the role of Amrit Paul, sources said.

However, Paul is maintaining that the scandal had taken place without his knowledge and he had not received any money.

The CID had submitted a 1,406-page charge-sheet against the jailed IPS officer. Amrit Paul is the first senior ADGP-level officer to be arrested in connection with the PSI scandal that rocked the state and made national news.

(With IANS inputs)