E-Paper
TA scam: Karnal police yet to nab main accused
The scam came to the fore when an unsigned complaint was received at the office of Haryana director general of police (DGP), following which an inquiry was marked to the Karnal SP
More than a week after Karnal police registered an FIR against their employees in the transport allowance (TA) scam in the accounts department of Karnal SP office, the police were yet to arrest the main accused.
The special investigation team led by DSP (Indri) Randhir Singh, however, had arrested assistant sub-inspectors (ASIs)—Rajbir Singh (TA clerk) and Sahab Singh (cashier)— who were sent in judicial custody.
“Two police teams were working on to arrest main accused exemptee sub-inspector (ESI) Gurnam Singh and Mahavir Singh, a retired cop and former cashier at the account branch, who were also accused in the scam,” said DSP Randhir Singh.
“After verification of the documents, it was found that the accused had siphoned off ₹42 lakh as TA from the bank accounts of the employees and investigation was still underway in this regard,” he said.
On being asked about the involvement of more officials as the accused had also withdrawn money from the accounts of two Class IV employees (as per the FIR), the DSP said, “As of now, we have found that only four people were involved in this scam and as they were cashiers, they withdrew money without getting noticed.
Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar during his visit to Karnal had assured stern action against cops involved in the TA scam.
The scam came to the fore when an unsigned complaint was received at the office of Haryana director general of police (DGP), following which an inquiry was marked to the Karnal SP.
During the investigation, the allegations stating irregularities between 2013 and 2020 were found to be true in the audit and investigation by the SP office, after which an FIR was registered under Sections 420, 409, 467, 468, 471 and 120 B of the IPC.
In the complaint sent to the DGP office, it was alleged that Gurnam and Rajbir, with the help of other cops, used to increase the number of days for TA claimed by employees. They created two fake IDs of Balwan Singh and Sumit Kumar, who were not even employees of Haryana Police. As per the police officials, involvement of more cops cannot be ruled out as the accused might have created more fake IDs.
