Silchar, Sept. 10 -- An Assam government official hired mimicry artists to imitate the voices of chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and the state's top bureaucrats to cheat over a hundred businessmen across states in a jobs-and-contracts racket, police said on Thursday.

Debeswar Bora, a 1999-batch Assam Civil Service (ACS) officer, currently serving as the district development commissioner (DDC) of Dhemaji, allegedly amassed crores of rupees by convincing targets he had a direct line to the state government leadership.

Bora was arrested from his official residence on September 7. Investigators suspect the racket had been operating for nearly a decade. During simultaneous raids at Bora's office and residences in Dhemaji and Guwahati, the...