1.23 cr siphoned off from NDRI accounts, 5 booked

ACCUSED, INCLUDING 2 RESEARCH FELLOWS, ALLEGEDLY TRANSFERRED MONEY TO THEIR PERSONAL ACCOUNTS

KARNAL: A sum of ` 1.23 crore has been siphoned off fraudulently from the bank accounts of the National Dairy Research Institute (NDRI) here by five people, including two research fellows, a PhD student and a clerk.

Though the accused have allegedly been siphoning off money for the past one year, the authorities of this prestigious institute came to know about the scam recently and filed an FIR against the five accused on March 8.

As per the complaint filed by Smita Sirohi, the vigilance officer of the NDRI, the accused allegedly transferred the huge amount from the bank accounts of NDRI to their personal accounts fraudulently.

The accused have been identified as Sukhvinder Singh, a senior research fellow of National Initiative on Climate Resilient Agriculture ( NICRA) project, Amrender Kumar Srivastva, a research fellow, Manpreet Kaur, a PhD student hailing from Nawanshahar district of Punjab, Vikram Singh, brother of Sukhvinder, and Deepak Kumar, a clerk. Sources said it was found that Sukhvinder, who had been appointed on contractual basis and monitoring the research of NICRA project, had been transferring the money, along with others, for the past one year and they also used fake bills to claim the amount.

The police booked all the five accused under sections 120 B, 409, 420, 467, 468 and 471 of the IPC.

Even a week after the registration of FIR, the police have failed to arrest any of the accused and claimed that they were making raids. “We could not make any arrests yet and are conducting raids to nab the accused,” said Prateek Kumar, incharge, Civil Lines police station, Karnal.

The sources said the money which had been siphoned off was allocated for the NICRA project and the accused had allegedly withdrawn the money using fake bills and forged signatures. They also had accessibility to the online fund transfer.

Meanwhile, NDRI director AK Srivastav remained inaccessible, despite repeated attempts made by Hindustan Times. His office staff claimed he was “busy in meetings”.

Sirohi said, “We have already filed an FIR in this regard against five people and also ordered a departmental inquiry.”

Asked about the modus operandi adopted by the accused, she said, “Sukhwinder had been in the institute since 2011 and he had accessibility to user IDs and passwords of bank accounts. He also used fake signatures of the authorised persons to transfer money to three bank accounts in the name of Sukwinder Singh, his brother Vikram and research student Manpreet Kaur.”

She said the matter came to light when the officers concerned matched the details of the expenditure and released funds. They found that ` 1.23 had been withdrawn fraudulently.