BHOPAL: On the direction of Chhattisgarh High Court, the CBI, Bhopal unit has registered an FIR against unidentified government servants including IAS officers and others in connection with Rs 1000 crore corruption in Chhatisgarh PRRC.
Names of unidentified members, office bearers of State Resource Centre (SRC) and Physical Referral Rehabilitation Centre(PRRC), unidentified public servants of Chhattisgarh figures in the FIR.
The court’s direction comes on the petition of Kundan Singh Thakur seeking action over the alleged corruption in PRRC. The petitioner had alleged that officials of PRRC had ripped off the government money by showing false appointments and fake operation. Bilaspur High Court in its order dated January 30, 2020, directed that the matter shall be investigated by the CBI, Bhopal unit in a fair and independent manner.
The Court ordered “CBI would investigation the alleged misappropriation and siphoning off more than Rs 1,000 crore from SRC and PRRC during last 10 years”.
The CBI has registered the case against the Unknown members / office bearers of State Resource Centre (SRC) and Physical Referral Rehabilitation Centre(PRRC), unknown public servants and others of state Chhattisgarh under section 120-B409,420,467,468, 471 of IPC and 13(2), 13(1)(d) of PC Act.
As per the FIR, state resource centre (SRC) was established in Chhatisgarh in 2004 under the Society Registration Act. The government gave the mandate to SRC to set up PRRC across the state for the welfare of the disabled and for the same huge amount was sanctioned to run various schemes. PRRCs were set up in districts, however, neither any appointments were made nor any activity was conducted by them. The salary though was disbursed regularly to ‘appointed person’ without a miss and funds were withdrawn for running welfare schemes and holding activities. The gross administrative and financial anomalies in the PRRC came to fore when Thakur (The petitioner) a government servant came to know that while he was serving at an office, he was shown as an employee of the PRRC drawing salary and perks. When Thakur came to know about this gross irregularity, he approached police and thereafter moved high court seeking action on people responsible for the fraud.
Latter, the state government in its memo made it clear that there was no precise information available at the PRRC regarding the withdrawal of salary of its employees. The Finance Department had also conducted an audit and prima facie illegal withdrawal of cash had come to fore. While ‘salary’ was mostly given to the employees in cash, only a few got it through bank.
The FIR is registered against IAS, SAS officers and others including Vivek Dhand, MK Raut, Asok Shukla, Sunil Kujur, BL Agarwal, Satish Pandey, PP Soti. Director of SRC Rajesh Tiwari, director of SRC Ashok Tiwari, deputy director Harman Khalkho, additional director ML Pandey, Deputy director Pankaj Verma and many others.