Court staffer swindles Rs 1.5cr road accident money; Madras HC to clean up system

CHENNAI: A subordinate court employee swindled Rs 1.5 crore of compensation money awarded for road accident victims, prompting the Madras high court to order inspection of all records pertaining to motor accident cases in the state.
Shocked by the misappropriation of funds by a court employee at Pattukottai, a special bench of Justice P N Prakash and Justice Abdul Quddhose appointed district-level nodal officers to inspect records and to come out with a foolproof and uniform system to prevent such frauds in future.
This apart, a police complaint was lodged, based on which Thanjavur CCB police registered a case and arrested the staff member concerned.
“It was noticed that the actual number of fixed deposit receipts pending in the courts did not find a reflection in the ledgers; in hundreds of cases, the transport corporations and insurance companies had deposited the compensation amounts without mentioning the MCOP case numbers to the credit of which they ought to be deposited,” the bench said.
As a sequel to which, the compensation amounts had not reached the claimants; in several hundreds of cases disposed of decades ago, lakhs of rupees were found lying in the civil court deposit (CCD) without being invested in fixed deposits, thereby depriving the claimants of their legitimate interest component, the court added.
When the issue was taken up for hearing on Friday, the judges said, “We are of the view that in order to undertake the massive exercise of cleaning the Augean stables, competent officers of the rank of district judges should be appointed in all the districts, who must first be given training as to how they should have to proceed with the task of inspection of the records of the MCOP tribunals and set them straight, if they are not in order.”
As soon as the issue came to light, the court administration appointed three committees -- high court inspection committee, 3-member sub judge committee and additional district judge-cum-principal sub judge committee.
Meanwhile, the reports submitted by the committees disclosed several appalling features in the system of record maintenance in motor accident claims tribunals in the district, paving the way for embezzlement.
Since it was brought to the notice of the chief justice that the situation in the other districts also may be no better, the chief justice constituted the special bench to go into more on the judicial side of the issue and to come out with a robust, foolproof and uniform system throughout the state in order that there would not be any scope for such possible misappropriation in future.