How this gang of six siphoned off Rs 50 lakh of scholarship money
Among the perpetrators was an employee of the CCRT institute, which comes under the ministry of culture and provides scholarships.
By TNN | Updated:
NEW DELHI: The Crime Branch of Delhi Police has claimed to have busted a 'scholarship scam' and arrested six people, including a serving employee of Centre for Cultural Resources and Training. The accused had embezzled over Rs 50 lakh of the scholarship money.
The men have been identified as Sandip Kumar, Vishnu Tiwari, Jai Prakash, Prasanta Mondol, Kaushik Sinha and Chandra Prakash Mishra. They belong to Delhi, UP and West Bengal and were arrested between August 19 and 23.
Additional CP Rajiv Ranjan said a complaint about the scam was given to police by CCRT Dwarka director G C Joshi. The institute comes under ministry of culture and provides scholarships to children in the age group of 10 to 14 years in various artistic fields at the national level.
The institute had received many complaints from awardees who didn't get the money. "It was further alleged that a fraud to the tune of 37.25 lakh was committed by ex-employee Sandip Kumar, who had worked as a programmer on contract for about seven years in CCRT and was dealing with all IT-related queries," Ranjan said.
Kumar supposedly played the system after scholarship disbursal became an online process from December 2014.
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DCP (crime) Bhishan Singh explained, "The procedure under this system is that details of the awardees-names, bank details, etc-are sent by the scholarship section to the accounts section in CCRT, and thereafter in a routine process from the accounts section to banks concerned in the form of a soft copy through registered email ID."
In this case, the bank was Canara Bank's Dwaka sector 7 one located in the CCRT office complex itself.
"Kumar would manipulate the soft copy of the details of scholarship holders and amount payable statements as prepared by the scholarship section and insert the details of himself, his wife, mother and other people known to him. He would then forward them to the bank to disburse the money," Singh added.
The Crime Branch followed the money trail, and on August 19, a team led by ACP Aditya Gautam and inspector Richhpal Singh arrested the Kumar and Tiwari. They led the police to others.
