8 held for defrauding power dept of ₹1.77 cr
NOIDA: Eight persons, including the deputy manager of a public sector bank, were arrested by the Sector 49 police on Wednesday for allegedly perpetrating a fraud of ₹1.77 crore on the electricity department. Another deputy manager is on the run, after the power department noticed discrepancies in remittances to its account last month and filed a police complaint.
According to police, the fraud was done by the employees of the Bulandshahr branch of the bank, former and current contractual employees of the electricity department and their accomplices. They siphoned off bill payments in demand drafts and cheques to another account and then withdrew the amount.
The suspects were identified as Sachin Kumar (Ghaziabad), the mastermind, Vishal Sharma (Sector 76 Noida), Manish Kumar (Ashok Nagar Delhi), Ankur Bhaskar (Bulandshahr), Karan Singh, (Sector 20 Noida), Jai Subhash Vishwakarma (Sector 24 Noida), Yatendra Chaudhary (Ghaziabad) and Brajesh Kumar (Sector 58 Noida).
“Sachin worked as contractual employee at a power house 15 years ago and Jai had taken over his work in 2010. In 2019, they met Karan and came up with the plan to defraud the power department. They shared the plan with Manish, who works with the agency responsible for depositing demand drafts (DDS) of customers into the bank account of the power department. They also roped in Anand, a deputy manager of the public sector bank,” deputy commissioner of police, zone 1, Sankalp Sharma said.
Police said the power department has an account at the Sector 50 branch of a private bank, where the agency deposits the DDS and cheques. The department’s initial complaint was against the bank itself, but police said the bank had no role in the fraud.
The suspects got Brajesh make a fake Aadhaar card using which they opened a bank account in the name of an electrical firm.
“Manish would remove high value DDS from the bundles going to the department’s bank account and replace them with those of lower values. They would then remove the stamp on these DDS and replace it with that of Brajesh’s account. The DDS would be deposited into the bogus account and Ankur would withdraw the money in Bulandshahr and distribute it among the gang members,” DCP said.
Vishal and Yatendra were tasked with depositing the DDS, police said.
“This is how they duped the department of ₹1,66,50,000 of which ₹1,66,14,000 was withdrawn. A search is on for the other deputy manager of the bank,” Sharma said.
Police recovered ₹12 lakh from the suspects along with DDS worth ₹10.23 lakh. Property worth ₹45 lakh was also seized and ₹15 lakh was seized from their bank accounts. In addition, three fake stamps and a phone were also recovered from them.
Sachin and the bank managers took a 20% commission while Jai and Manish took 10% each. The rest of the money was divided among the others, police said.
The suspects were produced before a magistrate and later sent to jail.
“The account was opened in February 2019. They have been defrauding us since then. We lost ₹1.77 crore and it is good that the case was worked out, thereby preventing further loss to the department,” VN Singh, chief engineer, Paschimanchal Vidyut Vitaran Nigam Limited, said.
Tanmayee Tyagi tanmayee.tyagi@htlive.com ■