Former Centre for Cultural Resources and Training employee held in scholarship scam

New Delhi: A former employee at the Centre for Cultural Resources and Training (CCRT) was among six persons arrested for carrying out Rs 50 lakh scholarship scam by manipulating the personal details of students at the training centre, police said on Saturday.

The CCRT is an autonomous organisation under Union Ministry of Culture.

The accused identified as Sandip Kumar (33) was the mastermind who along with Vishnu Prasad Tiwari (30), Jay Prakash Pal (19), Prosanta Mondal (41), Koushik Sinha Roy (35) and Chandra Prakash (26) used to run the scam, the role of everyone else apart from Kumar was just to provide their bank details which Kumar used for his fraudulent activities.

The people used to get a commission in return of giving their bank details. Kumar and Tiwari were arrested on August 19 while rest of the people were taken into custody on Friday, police added.

In a complaint filed by G C Joshi, the Director of CCRT alleged that the institute had received many complaints from the selected scholarship awarded children and their parents regarding non-receipt of scholarship amounts, Rajiv Ranjan, Additional Commissioner of Police (crime) said.

Joshi alleged that a scholarship fraud to the tune of Rs 37.25 lakhs was committed by ex-employee Sandip Kumar, who had worked as a programmer on contractual basis for the last about 7 years in CCRT and was dealing with all IT related queries, he said.

CCRT provides scholarships to young children in the age group of 10 to 14 years in various artistic fields at the national level, police said.

Kumar manipulated soft copy of the details of scholarship holders and amount payable statements and used them fraudulently by inserting his details or with details of his relatives or acquaintances, the senior officer said.

A statement indicating the names, bank details and amount paid fraudulently to 16 individuals by Kumar, as ascertained from the CCRT Bankers are under scrutiny, the officer added.

During interrogation, Kumar told police that he joined CCRT in the month of August 2011 as a computer programmer and was later attached with account section where he used to prepare a list of scholarship granted to students, Ranjan said.

The scholarship list contained details of parents or guardian's name and bank account details. Kumar used to transfer the scholarship amount to bank accounts of his associates.

He did it on a regular basis and roped in his family members, friends, associates and a co-worker for the same after offering them a certain percentage as commission, the officer added.