PATNA: The
Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Tuesday lodged four new FIRs against government, bank and
NGO officials in the multi-crore
Srijan scam. With these four FIRs, the total numbers of FIR lodged by CBI has increased to 14.
The scam, figuring much above Rs 1,500 crore till now, had surfaced at Bhagalpur in August last year but with investigation, it spread to several other districts of Bihar. The scam is related to
fraudulent transfer of government fund kept in bank accounts of different departments to bank accounts of NGO named Srijan Mahila Vikas Ewan Sahyog Samiti (SMVSS) which was founded by
Manorama Devi in 1990s in in Bhagalpur.
Manorama had died in February last year after which her daughter-in-law Priya Kumar took control of the helm of the NGO. Priya and her husband were yet to be arrested. The state government had later recommended for CBI investigation in the scam on August 24, 2017.
In the first FIR lodged on Tuesday, the then Banka
district land acquisition officer (DLAO) Jayshree Thakur, the then branch managers of Bank of Baroda (BOB) and Indian Bank (IB) in Bhagalpur were made accused while in the second FIR, ten office bearers of SMVSS namely Shublaxmi Prasad, Rajni Priya, Seema Devi, Jasima Khatoon, Rajrani Verma, Arpana Verma, Rubi Kumari, Rani Devi, Sunita Devi and Suna Devi were made named accused.
In the third FIR, the then and present branch managers of BOB’s Ghantaghar branch and IB’s Patal Babu Road branch, both in Bhagalpur were made accused while in the last FIR, the then Ghantaghar branch’s senior branch manager and cashier-cum-accountant, the then Bhagalpur district welfare officer Arun Kumar and deceased nazir Mahesh Mandal were made named accused. All office bearers of SMVSS were also made named accused in these FIRs.
According to these FIRs, Rs 83.10 crore were fraudulently embezzled from Banka DLAO’s bank account.
Different bank accounts were opened in Bhagalpur and money was parked in which from which they were fraudulently transferred to bank accounts of SMVSS. Thakur had opened the accounts outside district without permission. Forged cheques used for transferring the money while district land acquisition office was provided different set of cheque books.
In the similar way, altogether Rs 277.31 crore were either fraudulently transferred or deposited in eight different bank account of district rural development agency (DRDA) in Bhagalpur which were with Bank of India and Indian Bank branch in the district. These money were of different public welfare schemes run by central government. Rs 115.71 crore were alone embezzled from one of the eight bank accounts.
