MBA graduate diverted over Rs 50L meant for scholarships
New Delhi: An MBA graduate and an ex-employee of CCRT (Centre for Cultural Resources and Training) identified as Sandip Kumar, was arrested for fraudulently exploiting a loophole in the scholarship distribution programme and altering the details of the awardees thereby transferring the money in the accounts of their friends and relatives, depriving the eligible students of the scholarship.
CCRT (under the aegis of Ministry of Culture, Govt of India) which provides scholarships to young children in the age group of 10 to 14 years in various artistic fields at the national level, had received complaints from the selected scholarship awarded children and their parents regarding non-receipt of scholarship amounts.
The procedure of payment under this system is that details of the scholarship holders like their names, bank details, scholarship amounts, guardianship names, ID are sent by the scholarship section to the accounts section in CCRT and thereafter in a routine process, the accounts section forwards it to the concerned bankers of CCRT in the form of a soft copy through registered email ID.
"The modus-operandi of the ex-employee Sandip Kumar was that a soft copy of the details of scholarship holders and amount payable statement as prepared by the scholarship section was manipulated fraudulently by inserting the details of himself, his wife, mother and other persons known to him, thereby altering the names of the actual scholarship holders, while forwarding to the bank for release of the payment," said DCP (Crime) Bhishm Singh. Sandip Kumar was arrested on August 19 along with Vishnu Prasad Tiwari for duping students of more than Rs 50 lakh of scholarship amount.
Once he noticed that the list could be edited easily and the scholarship amount could be transferred to the bank account of any other person in place of the bank account of the student, he started doing this on a regular basis. The other arrested are Jay Prakash Pal, Chandra Prakash Mishra, Koushik Sinha Roy, Prosanta Mondal.
"He got hold of the account details of his family members and also roped in a number of friends, associates and also a co-worker for the same after offering them a certain percentage as commission," said Rajiv Ranjan, Additional CP (Crime).
