The highway robbers at Durgapur had looted a sealed pack of salt and not Rs 1 crore in cash, latest investigations have revealed.

Two policemen, ASI Asim Chakraborty, the duty officer of Durgapur PS and Chandan Chowdhury, a constable deputed with CID’s bomb squad, a dismissed cop Mrityunjoy Sarkar along with three others were arrested by the police on Friday after a Delhi-based railway contractor had complained about robbing Rs 1.01cr from him. Mukesh Chawla, the contractor, alleged that the policemen had intercepted his car on the highway in the name of checking and had vanished with the loaded bag.

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Chawla, as he claimed: “Was carrying the cash to Kolkata for his business.” The police however has revealed that Chawla ‘unknowingly’ was carrying a sealed bag of salt instead of cash and the entire cash actually was removed much earlier in Asansol before he started his journey.

Before moving to Asansol from his Delhi office, Chawla had transferred Rs 1.01cr cash to the bank accounts of his business partner Prithviraj Jaiswal of Rupnarayanpur in Asansol through RTGS and NEFT in phases and he submitted the entire transaction details to the police while lodging FIR here.

The deputy commissioner of police, Durgapur, Abhishek Gupta told The Statesman: “Chawla, as we suppose, had fallen a victim of a conspiracy in which the dismissed policeman in league with some business partners of Chawla had plotted the crime. They had kept the actual cash in a bag in front of Chawla but had loaded salt in a similar bag that they had altered when he’d started his journey for Kolkata.”

The police, meanwhile, have raided the premises of Prithviraj Jaiswal and Ajay Das in Rupnarayanpur and seized five cars, eight motorcycles, one firearm. The investigators suspect their strong link in the ‘fake’ robbery conspiracy.