Shillong: In a startling revelation, Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma on Friday said that ministers, legislators, businessmen and even common people in the State have received extortion demands and that comprehensive investigation in this regard was on to end
this racket.
“All the actions and steps that you have seen in the last many weeks, months and days, have been done because of those messages and bomb blasts, the IED blasts that took place in different locations and because of the different threats that have been there to the safety of the citizens of our state,” Sangma said.
On Thursday, Leader of Opposition and former chief minister Mukul Sangma of the Congress had revealed that many ministers and legislators had been served with demand notes and had slammed the state government for its alleged “insensitivity” regarding the issue.
“Everything that has happened in the past has been clearly the steps that have been taken to ensure that we are able to stop all of these kinds of activities that are taking place,” the Chief Minister said.
“Therefore, whether it is the different arrests that have already been made, different operations that have been done, different investigations taking place, all of it are based on inputs that we are receiving, whether it is SMSs received from political leaders, from businessmen, from individuals, from common people, all these messages that have come in,
in terms of extortion, which really what it is. It’s an extortion racket in one way,” Conrad said.
“This has led to us as a government and more importantly the police department doing a large amount of investigation. Large amounts of evidence, documentation and proof, many kinds of proof…investigation is being really done in a lot of detail. Movements of individuals…
different kind of data… I will be risking the investigation in this point of time by revealing all of that,” the Chief Minister said, adding that steps have been taken by the police department to ensure that this comes to a stop.
Stating that ministers and legislators also have received extortion demands, Conrad said, @ investigation on the numbers through which they had received this and other inputs from
them have already been collected. So yes, there were cases but I don’t have the exact numbers with me.”
