Noida: 16 cops transferred over alleged bribery

The Senior Superintendent of Police of Gautam Budh Nagar has dissolved the Crime Branch's Special Operation Group (SOG) and sent 16 personnel to police lines after internal messages about alleged bribery from several businessmen and traders became public on Friday morning.

Sources stated that the reason for sending them to district lines was that there should be no interference in the investigation that will follow.

According to the police, one of the cops in the SOG allegedly sent the list of collections through a picture on Twitter to the Uttar Pradesh DGP, O P Singh after a heated argument broke out among the cops over the distribution of money collected from different sources. The tweet went viral on social media in which photos were uploaded citing various amounts of bribes that were allegedly taken by the officers from businessmen and traders.

"The first and the foremost thing which we are doing is checking the credentials of the account from which the pictures were posted. With the help of the cyber cell, we have removed the tweet. We have formed different teams to investigate the case before taking any action," said Ajay Pal Sharma, Senior Superintendent of Police, GBN.

Sharma said, "Through investigation, it will be determined if anyone is at fault or not, but we do not want to keep any angle uncovered. So that is why all the police personnel were recalled to the district police lines," said Sharma.

Following the incident, the Director General of Police has ordered an investigation into the matter. "An inquiry headed by SP City, Noida has been launched into the matter," said a senior police officer.