India News | Three Held for Fire at Collector's Office in MP's Shivpuri

Shivpuri (MP), May 20 (PTI) A government employee and his two associates have been arrested in connection with the fire that gutted several documents at the district collector's office in Madhya's Shivpuri last week, police said on Monday.

Several documents were gutted in a major fire that broke out at the district collector's office on the intervening night of Friday and Saturday, following which the State Disaster Emergency Response Force (SDERF) was called to douse the fire.

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Superintendent of Police (SP) Aman Singh Rathore said the accused allegedly started the fire to destroy files related to the irregularities in the distribution of compensation in the land acquisition section of the collector's office.

A computer operator working in the section had hired two men to set fire, he said.

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CCTV footage showed two men inside the premises between 1 am and 1.30 am on May 17.

The duo were later identified as Roop Singh Parihar, the computer operator of the land acquisition section, and his associate Rahul Singh Parihar, he said.

The SP said an inquiry was pending against Parihar regarding the embezzlement of Rs 20 lakh in the land acquisition for an irrigation scheme.

The police had already registered a case against Parihar and other officials at Kotwali police station for embezzlement, he said.

The government official and his associates Rahul Parihar and Jitendra Pal have been arrested, the official said.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)