Guwahati, Sept. 14: Police today launched an inquiry against a firm owned by the son of former Assam agriculture minister Nilamani Sen Deka for allegedly selling irrigation pumps, meant to be given to farmers for free, in the open market.

The alleged diversion came to light when some employees of the firm - Pathik Enterprise - were loading 13 pump sets onto a truck at Rukminigaon here in order to transport them to Odisha.

TV reporters got a whiff of the matter and reported it to Dispur police station. A police source said they have sought all relevant documents about the pump sets from Debasree Sen Deka, one of the proprietors of the firm and son of Nilamani Sen Deka.

The source said 450 pump sets were found at the godown at Rukminigaon. The total value of these pumps is estimated to be around Rs 1 crore. The source said it was suspected that the firm, a registered supplier of machinery and equipment to the state agriculture department, had kept these pumps at their go-down to sell them illegally to an Indore-based company -Marshal Power Private Limited.

"We believe that these pumps were actually meant for distribution among farmers of the state by the agriculture department," the source told The Telegraph.

He said Debasree has been asked to submit all the documents by tomorrow and five policemen have been deployed at the godown so that the pumps are not smuggled out.

Debasree was not in his office when the incident happened.

"If Debasree does not turn up with the documents tomorrow, appropriate action will be initiated against him according to law," the source said.

Nilamani Sen Deka was the state's agriculture minister from May 2011 till January this year when Rakibul Hussain replaced him during a ministry reshuffle by chief minister Tarun Gogoi.

Since the CID is also investigating an alleged scam in distributing agricultural lime by the agriculture department during Deka's tenure, a team of CID officials today also visited the godown.

"It seems the pumps belong to the agriculture department and the firm was trying to illegally sell those to the Indore-based firm. But it is too early to jump to conclusions since our investigation is still at a nascent stage," a CID official said. "A case is likely to be registered at Dispur police station and the CID will monitor the investigation," he added.

Deka today denied any wrongdoing by his son. He said Debasree had a dealership of the Indore-based firm, which he relinquished some days ago. So, the company was taking away the pumps today.