The South Central Railway (SCR) Expenditure Section Accounts Assistant V Ganesh Kumar has been placed under suspension for his alleged involvement in Rs 2.20 crore fraudulent payments of pharma bills to three agencies in the city. As per preliminary enquiry, about 31 fake bills without GST number and manual purchase order were passed between October 2018 and April 2019. However, only 24 invoice/bills could be located. Of them, one bill was a photo copy and the remaining two were originals. The purchase orders mentioned on bills were non-existent, SCR Deputy Chief Vigilance Officer RVR Murthy said in the complaint given to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) here.
According to the complaint, the bills were apparently certified in the medical department by APHO (Assistant Pharmacy Officer) along with senior divisional accountant for receipt of medicines supplied. The bills contained the stamping and signatures forwarding them to accounts office. The enforcement on the bill, which contains passing entry like amount passed for and allocation of expenditure, had signatures of accounts assistant, section officer and officer. It is possible that the signatures were forged or maybe there was a connivance of more than one individual in the process. Bill registration, internal check, passing and confirmation etc., are the main stages in passing claims. Each function needs to be performed by different officials. However, in these cases apparently all activities were performed by the same accounts officer in Integrated Pay Roll and Accounting System (IPAS). How he was assigned all rights in IPAS thus circumventing the multiple stages in internal check system is being probed into in consultation with the Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS).
The Principal Financial Advisor office has blocked bank accounts of three firms Sai Balaji Pharma and Surgicals, Vinayaka Agencies and Sri Thirumala Agencies in whose favour the bills were passed and credited by advising Habsiguda branch Axis Bank. Kumar was placed under suspension and his access to the system has been disabled with immediate effect. The SCR’s Vigilance department has collected transaction wise details of three accounts containing amount credited by railways along with amount credited by outsiders. Details related to those who deposited the amount and beneficiary of transferred amount were also sought from the bank. A request was also made to the bank to provide CCTV footage of transactions as shown in the statements. An effort was made to ascertain whether the names of firms/individuals appeared in the bank statements of the three accounts of the firms match with any of the suppliers registered with the railways. From the office order dated December 3, 2018, it was observed that Kumar was not entrusted with the job of passing medical bills. Thus, Kumar in connivance with a group of outsiders was involved in the fraud, Murthy said in the complaint.
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