CBI books railway officials in Rs 2.20 crore fraud

The CBI has booked a railway official and three companies in Secunderabad for allegedly siphoning off Rs 2.20 crore from railways' accounts to fake firms using fraudulent bills, officials said Tuesday. Now suspended accounts assistant V Ganesh Kumar, who was posted in the Expenditure Section, South Central Railway, and fake firms -- Sai Balaji Pharma and Surgical, Vinayaka Agencies and Sri Thirumala Enterprises -- have been named in the FIR lodged on a complaint from the railways, they said.

During a test check, the railways had found that 31 alleged fake bills without GST numbers were allegedly cleared in six months from October 2018 to April 2019, they said. It is alleged that Ganesh, in criminal conspiracy with others, allegedly generated and passed these bills in the name of fake firms to transfer around Rs 2.20 crore into the accounts of these firms in Axis Bank.

"The preliminary enquiry also suspects the involvement of more officials of South Central Railways and private individuals," they said. In its complaint, the railways said bill registration, internal check, passing and confirmation are the main stages in passing the claims and each function needs to be performed by different officials.

"However, in these cases apparently all the activities were performed by the same accounts assistant. How he was assigned all rights in Integrated Pay Roll and Accounting System thus circumventing the multiple stages in internal check system is being inquired into in consultation with CRIS (Centre for Railways Information Systems)," it said.

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