Rs 2.20 crore fraud unearthed in SCR

Hyderabad: CBI sleuths on Sunday arrested South Central Railway (SCR) Accounts Assistant V Ganesh Kumar on the charge of his involvement of a fraud of Rs 2.20 crore in payment of pharma supply bills in PFA's office.

A fraudulent payment of pharma supply bills to the tune of Rs 2.20 crore was detected in South Central Railway (SCR), Secunderabad by the Railway officials which prompted them to lodge a complaint with the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

When the Principal Financial Adviser's (PFAs) office of SCR unearthed the fraud of Rs 2.20 crore where they were suspecting the accounts assistant V Ganesh Kumar (NGO) who is working in Expenditure section/ PFA's office had generated and passed 31 pharma bills to fake firms.

They found that the amount was transferred from Railway's account in integrated payroll and accounting system (IPAS) to three firms --Sai Balaji Pharma and Surgicals, Sri Vinayaka Agencies and Sri Thirumala Agencies who had accounts in Axis Bank, Habsiguda.

The suspected fraudulent payment of pharma supply bills was detected during a test check in which 31 fake bills without GST number and with fake purchase order number were passed between October, 2018 and April, 2019.

The vigilance officials verified statements of accounts of the three firms and another three accounts having transactions with the firms' accounts in the same branch obtained from the Axis Bank, it was suspected that a group of outsiders were involved in the occurrence of the fraud and to unearth the fraud the suspect official was placed under suspension from May 10.

Later, the competent Railway authorities handed over the file to CBI officials for a thorough inquiry into the alleged irregularities and to initiate action against the suspected official under section 17 A (c) of Prevention of Corruption (Amendment) Act, 2018.

Based on the complaint of R V R Murthy, Deputy Chief Vigilance Officer of SCR, Rail Nilayam, the CBI officials registered cases against the suspected official under sections 120-B r/w 420, 409, 468 and 471 of IPC and took him into custody and are interrogating him.