A former employee at the Centre for Cultural Resources and Training (CCRT) was among six persons arrested for carrying out a ₹50 lakh scholarship scam by manipulating personal details of students at the training centre, the police said on Friday.
Accused 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 Sandip was just to provide the bank details of the targets that Sandip used for to carry out fraudulent activities. Every accomplice used to get a commission.
Sandip and Vishnu were arrested on Sunday, while rest were taken into custody on Thursday.
In a complaint filed by G.C. Joshi, the Director of CCRT alleged that the institute had received many complaints from students, who were awarded scholarship, and their parents regarding non-receipt of scholarship amounts, Additional Commissioner of Police (Crime) Rajiv Ranjan said.
Mr. Joshi alleged that a scholarship fraud to the tune of ₹37.25 lakh was committed by Sandip, who had worked as a programmer on a contractual basis for the last seven years in CCRT and was dealing with IT-related queries, he said.
Sandip allegedly manipulated soft copies of the details of scholarship holders and the statement of the amount to be paid, and used them fraudulently by inserting his details or details of his relatives or acquaintances.
A statement with names, bank details and amount paid fraudulently to 16 individuals by Sandip are being scrutinised.
Sandip said that he joined CCRT in August 2011 as a computer programmer and later worked in the accounts section where he used to make lists of scholarship granted to students. The lists contained their parents or guardian’s name and bank account details. Sandip used to transfer the scholarship amount to bank accounts of his accomplices.