
A team from the Bareilly anticorruption unit of the state police arrived in Gautam Budh Nagar on Tuesday to investigate alleged irregularities pertaining to the issuance of no-objection certificates (NOC) from the fire department in 2019.
The matter came to light in September 2019, when a fire station officer was arrested by the Noida Police for allegedly accepting a bribe of ₹80,000 for issuing an NOC to a private hospital in Sector 48.
A probe in the matter revealed that a number vendors supplying fire safety equipment to commercial and residential establishments in the district were obtaining fire NOCs on behalf of applicants. After this information came to light, the Noida fire department filed as many as seven FIRs against at least 13 fire safety equipment vendors for using their personal contact information to obtain NOCs on behalf of their clients.
While the matter was being initially investigated by the Noida police department under the tenure of the last district SSP, Vaibhav Krishna, it was later handed over to the anticorruption unit of the state police.
A team from the Bareilly anti-corruption unit, led by deputy SP, Abdul Razzaq, visited the Sector 2 Harola fire station on Tuesday morning, before meeting the district fire chief.
“The investigation has been going on for a while. We filed complaints after irregularities were found in the process of NOC issuance. The vendors would use their personal contact information to obtain these certificates on behalf of applicants. The team today visited a few spots and spoke to fire personnel and others as a part of the ongoing probe,” said Arun Kumar Singh, the district’s chief fire officer.
Statements were taken and inquiries were made, while documents related to the alleged irregularities were also seized, said officials. Singh added that the investigating officials also visited the spots, whose NOCs were found to be questionable in the initial probe. The team spent over five hours in Noida, carrying out their investigation. Fire department officials said that the probe will continue and action will be taken against all those who are found to be involved in the irregularities.