Ravneet Singh

Tribune News Service

Patiala, July 9

Taking action against generation of fake scholarship bills, forging of signatures and misappropriation of funds, Punjabi University, Patiala, has terminated services of one and suspended two employees and filed a chargesheet against them for fraud.

The university has also started a formal inquiry into the embezzlement of money in which involvement of other employees is being probed. The university has terminated services of daily wager peon Jatinder Singh and suspended senior assistant Nishu Chaudhary, who was earlier working at the accounts section and superintendent Raminder Kaur in the case.

According to its findings, the employees prepared fake scholarship bills in the name of at least seven research fellows, wrongly verified them and passed them for payment. They have been accused of forging signatures of a head of a department and later fraudulently misusing the released funds by withdrawing them from various bank accounts for personal use. The employees have been directed to submit a reply over the charges. The employees also tried to misplace the records of three financial years to save themselves. VC Prof Arvind said, “There is prima facie evidence that they did forgery and embezzlement of funds. A formal inquiry has been ordered. A committee will probe the involvement of other employees as well.”

Meanwhile, a matter of submission of wrong receipts has also come to the university’s notice. The VC said it had also been given to the same committee.