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Journalism of Courage
On the evening of September 19 last year,Nand Kumar Gupta,block extension officer BEO of Rafiganj town in Bihars Aurangabad district,called his wife in Dehri-on-Sone where the family lived,and said he would not come home for the night but stay with a friend due to overload of work.
The next morning,he was found dead near a canal under Fesar police station of Aurangabad. Police said Gupta had committed suicide and that a suicide note was found on him. But the post-mortem report was not conclusive. Guptas elder brother,Nirmal Kumar Gupta,and his two sons Amit and Ajit,said the handwriting on the suicide note was not that of Gupta.
My father lost his life because of government paddy, Ajit,who is yet to recover from the shock of his loss,told The Indian Express.
An investigation of events in the run-up to Guptas death hints at a suspected web of corruption that started when paddy was procured by the Bihar State Food and Civil Supplies Corporation Ltd SFC and continued until it was allotted to rice mills,ending in a shortfall that is set to cause a loss of Rs 535 crore to the state government firm.
Gupta,56,like many officers at the block level,was asked to take charge of paddy procurement at one centre in Rafiganj. Gupta,who had several junior staffers to help him,is said to have blindly trusted them.
But in mid-July,when the SFC asked him to allot all the paddy stock to mills for processing and submit the accounts,he was apparently crestfallen to find that there was a shortage of 160 MT of paddy worth Rs 17.28 lakh. And Gupta,who otherwise had a clean record in service,had become a suspect.
His brother Nirmal said Gupta had shared his problems with him and he had comforted him saying he did not need to worry if his conscience was clear. Besides,he was not the only officer in the district who was found to have lower stocks of paddy than what had been recorded and paid for.
Under pressure from SFC bosses,Gupta had embarked to find out the truth and try and identify those he suspected had procured lower quantities of paddy,recorded higher quantities and paid for the latter.
The police also suspect foulplay in his death. Why should anyone choose to commit suicide at a deserted place,some 5 km from his workplace? asked a police officer.
Aurangabad SFC district manager Vakil Prasad Singh said there could be several possibilities. Several things could have happened. either lesser paddy was received against exaggerated entries by junior staffers of Gupta. It is also possible that the BEOs juniors sold some paddy and caused a shortage, Singh told The Indian Express.
Besides,mill owners could have bribed Guptas juniors to allot them higher quantities of paddy to process against entries for lower quantities. While the police will do its job,we are also trying to find out the truth behind Guptajis death, Singh added.
