CBI books five DoPT officials for cheating, forgery

New Delhi: The CBI on Tuesday said it has booked five officials of the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) on charge of siphoning off government funds.

The agency also carried out searches at 11 premises of the accused officials and private persons in Delhi, CBI spokesperson Abhishek Dayal told IANS.

The CBI had registered a case against Under Secretary Sanjay Mehta, Section Officer Hemant, Assistant Section Officer R.K. Arora, Section Officer Vijay Pal and Assistant Section Officer Mahendra Singh, all posted in the Training Section of DoPT, and several others on charges of cheating, forgery and criminal conspiracy under the Indian Penal Code.

According to the CBI official, the five officials were booked on Monday evening after a complaint from DOPT Director (Training) V.K. Sinha on September 9 that Mehta, Arora and Hemant had siphoned off government funds through fraudulent sanction orders.

The complaint said it had been decided to place these officers under suspension.

Jain reported that persual of records for 2017-18 revealed that of the total 67 payments made during the fiscal under Training for All scheme, totalling Rs 9.21 crore, eight bills of Rs 18.17 lakh were issued fraudulently in favour of five vendors: Institute of Public Sciences, Kapil Book Store, Kavita Ahluwalia, Institute of Public Administration and Sahej Trading Corporation.

The complaint alleged that three sanction orders issued by the TFA Section were found to be issued fraudulently without the approval of the competent authority.