Storekeeper, employee at Delhi AIIMS eye centre held for fraud

Police are probing the fraud which surfaced around three months ago, and have already arrested a 59-year-old city-based trader, Sneh Rani Gupta, for duping the institute of at least ₹13 crore on October 30

The store keeper of the Dr Rajendra Prasad Eye Centre at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) has been arrested along with another contractual employee in the case related to fictitious deliveries of medical items at the eye department of the hospital for which money was released without the knowledge of senior officials, Delhi police said on Thursday.

Police said the trader’s questioning led them to the store keeper, Bijender Kumar, and the office assistant, Naveen Kumar, adding that investigators are questioning the two to identify more people from the hospital involved in the fraud. (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Police are probing the fraud which surfaced around three months ago, and have already arrested a 59-year-old city-based trader, Sneh Rani Gupta, for duping the institute of at least ₹13 crore on October 30.

Police said the trader’s questioning led them to the store keeper, Bijender Kumar, and the office assistant, Naveen Kumar, adding that investigators are questioning the two to identify more people from the hospital involved in the fraud.

Police said Bijender (52) allegedly prepared forged purchase documents, supply orders and inspection notes, and secured the release of payments in favour of Gupta’s firm.

Additional commissioner of police (EOW) RK Singh said the purchase documents were issued allegedly using Naveen’s official ID. “All the manual and digital records maintained at AIIMS for the purpose of such supplies revealed criminal misdeeds of the accused in connivance with accused firm,” he said, adding that Naveen worked as a programme assistant at the office of a former chief of the centre when the fraud happened.

Narrating the sequence of events that led the EOW to investigate the scam, police said that the scam surfaced in September when the medical superintendent of the Dr Rajendra Prasad Eye Centre lodged a complaint regarding embezzlement of government funds to the tune of ₹5 crore on account of purchase of linen items which were never delivered. Investigators soon uncovered that ₹13.85 crore was lost to the fraud.

Additional commissioner Singh said that these items were shown as purchased on basis of forged supply orders.

“No actual supply of items took place, and the payment was released to the supplier firm... The account statement of the firm confirmed receipt of payments for items which were never delivered. Scrutiny of the e-way bills revealed that the vehicles, shown as used for delivery of those goods to AIIMS, never delivered the same at AIIMS Delhi on any of the dates mentioned on the e-way bills. Scrutiny of GPS logs of the vehicles appearing on the e-way bills showed locations outside Delhi. This firm was a supplier and in business with AIIMS since many years,” said additional commissioner Singh.

The officer said that in response to forged supply orders, the accused firm submitted only invoices and delivery challans without physically delivering the goods. “The receipts of goods were not found in the other registers of general store. Bills were raised by AIIMS staff and was approved without the knowledge of the authorised/competent officials of AIIMS. After getting these bills sanctioned, the money was transferred to the firm’s account,” added Singh.