Indore (Madhya Pradesh): City police on Thursday booked 13 people including two printing contractors, district programme manager, district account manager, and nine other staff of health department in ASHA diary and printing material scam.
The police have booked the accused under section 409, 420, and 120-B of IPC at Central Kotwali Police Station following a complaint by SDM Ravi Verma.
The complaint mentions that the accused contractors Gulzar and Shahrukh had supplied the diaries and other material to the health department through their firm AF Graphix. The materials were supposed to come through the Madhya Pradesh State Sahkari Upbhokta Sangh, Bhopal. In the investigation led by ADM Abhay Bedekar, it was found that the accused had directly provided the printed material to the health centres through ZMOs and BMOs and received the payment of the more quantity than what was supplied causing loss to the government.
Along with contractor Shahrukh and Gulzar, DPM Mahesh Sahu, DAM Sanjeev Patel, LDC Parul Gupta, LDC Chhaya Sen, LDC Sangeeta Kaithwas, BCM Devkaram Chouhan, BCM Phoolchand Rajouriya, dresser Bagdiram Solanki, CHC Monica Rathore, pharmacists Santosh Shrivastava, and Vimal Chourasiya were booked by the police.
Anomalies in the purchases
1. An order of 49,603 units of family folder was given on August 6, 2021 to Madhya Pradesh Rajya Sahkari Upbhokta Sangh Maryadit, Bhopal but only 31,000 units were delivered but payment of 18,603 more units were shown in records, which was prepared by the DPM, DAM without receiving the same.
2. Order of family folder Part B of 3,67,067 units were given but only 1,00,750 folders were received. In this way, an embezzlement of over 2,66,317 folders were done in the record and payment of the same was also done.
3. Similar embezzlement of C-Back Form was also done in which over 2,66,316 more forms were shown and payment of the same was done even without receiving the same.
4. NHM register was also left blank by the health department officials and it seems that they left it blank for making entry of orders on the back date.
The probe
The probe team led by ADM Abhay Bedekar had reached the National Health Mission’s office and District Programme Manager’s office and seized various documents including the documents related to orders of stationary printing and supply, a couple of days ago.
The matter of anomalies in printing orders had come to fore during the District Health Committee meeting chaired by MP Shankar Lalwani and collector Manish Singh.
