SINDRI: Sindri: Nearly a week after the Centre ordered a CBI probe into an alleged scholarship scam in Jharkhand, the Dhanbad district administration booked 105 persons, including 96 school principals and operators, for siphoning off Rs 9.9 crore meant for grants to pre-matric scholarship students belonging to the minority community.
Dhanbad deputy commissioner Uma Shankar Singh and ADM (law and order) Chandan Kumar said that while the four-member inquiry committee has recommended termination of welfare department clerk Vinod Kumar Paswan and computer operator Ajay Kumar Mandal for their alleged involvement in the scam, the district administration has sought the permission of the state government to lodge FIRs against the district welfare officer and a state-level politician of a national party among others.
Kumar, who heads the inquiry committee, said pre-matric scholarships worth Rs 1.5 crore were distributed among 2,675 minority students of the district in 2018-19, but the numbers on paper saw a 404% rise to 13,506 in 2019-20 and a scholarship amount of Rs 11.5 crore was distributed.
“Surprisingly, none of the government officials or principals or nodal officers of the schools reported any sudden increase in the scholarship amount by Rs 9.9 crore in a year to higher officials, which shows that they were involved in the scam,” he said.
Kumar claimed a Chatra-based gang headed by Mohammed Sadiq, alias Shahid, Afzal and Faisal siphoned off the scholarship funds in connivance with district and state-level officials of the welfare department and different school administrations.
“The gang siphoned off the funds in three ways. In the first method, they enrolled fake students by obtaining the user IDs and passwords by taking school principals or school nodal officers for the scholarship into confidence and got the money transferred into their accounts. In the second method, they got fake user IDs and passwords on the basis of forged documents from the National Scholarship Portal (NSP), without the knowledge of the schools and in connivance of the welfare department officials, and siphoned off the money. In the third method, they got scholarship funds transferred from the welfare department of Dhanbad in the name of schools located outside Dhanbad,” he said.
The involvement of welfare department officials was also evident after it was found that a majority of the scholarships were withdrawn in the name of students living in school hostels and even for those schools that do not have a hostel facility.
Minority students living in school hostels are given a scholarship of Rs 10,000 while day scholars are given a scholarship of Rs 7,500. The involvement of some bank officials in the scam cannot be ruled out as a majority of the bank accounts, where the scholarship amounts were deposited, are not linked to Aadhaar, said Kumar.
During inquiry, Nilofar Parween, who worked for the gang, named Sadiq, Afzal, Faisal, Tarique, Sabina, Nazneen, Tausif, Tabish, Irfan, Sohail and a political leader. The district administration also recommended an FIR against Vinod paswan, Ajay Mandal, Gulam Mustafa, Pratap Jaiswara, Nilofer Parween, Santosh Vishwakarma, abdul Hameed, Jharia Lal Mahto and Kalim Akhtar besides others under Sections 409, 420, 467,468, 447, 471, 120(B) and 34 of the IPC and different sections of the IT Act. The administration has also recommended a high-level independent inquiry as the gang is learnt to have siphoned off scholarship funds from Ranchi, Bokaro, Lohardaga and Sahibganj districts of Jharkhand besides different districts of Bihar.