Sanjeev Pargal
JAMMU, May 21: The Central Bureau of Investigations (CBI) has booked top brass of IRCON International Limited and at least 15 Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) in two major cases of criminal misconduct registered for further investigations in which the amount involved might run into several crores.
Official sources told the Excelsior that Preliminary Enquiry (PE) has been registered against senior officers of IRCON after discrepancies were found in allotment of fire fighting Hydrant System in Banihal area. Noted Railways construction company M/s Gypsum Structural India Private Limited has also been named in the PE.
The top officials of IRCON International Limited, who have been booked in the case included Anand Prakash, the then Executive Director IRCON Project, Jammu, now repatriated to Indian Railways, M Kumar, the then Assistant General Manager (AGM) Finance and Sandesh Shrivastava, the then Additional General Manager (Civil), IRCON Banihal.
Sources said the top officials of IRCON have been charged with criminal misconduct on their part in allotting work of fire fighting Hydrant System in Tunnel No. T-80 in Banihal. The IRCON had floated a Notice Inviting Tender (NIT) for fire fighting Hydrant System work in tunnel T-80 for an amount of Rs. 10.80 crores.
However, the Indian Railways’ construction company cancelled the tender within a month of inviting it. Preliminary enquiries by the CBI revealed that the IRCON executed the work by procuring pipes on single tender basis and laying of work of fire fighting through M/s Gypsum Structural India Private Limited in complete violation of rules.
The CBI has collected the documents of the enquiry from IRCON and was conducting investigations whether undue favour was given to companies by IRCON after cancellation of tender of fire fighting work.
The CBI has asked its Investigating Officers (IOs) to work on all angles and establish how much benefit was given to the company and loss caused to the IRCON in the process of cancellation of tender and allotment of work to one particular company.
The CBI has registered two more Preliminary Enquiries (PEs) related to criminal misconduct against the Department of Handicrafts, Government of India, headquartered at Jammu.
Investigations by the CBI revealed that in the two enquiries, the NGOs had been allotted work of training and skill of Handicrafts among the people of Rajouri, Poonch, Udhampur and Doda as per schemes of the Government of India.
In both enquires, there are more than 15 NGOs, which were short listed and each NGO had done more than 10 programmes in inculcating skills of handicrafts among people of the four districts.
However, the enquiries by the CBI revealed that at the ground, the NGOs had managed group of 10 to 15 people in each programme as per requirement of the Government of India but in actual they had fabricated the presence of people.
The NGOs, had in the records, shown that the programmes had been conducted but on the ground no programmes were done, The NGO by fabricating records had drawn payment running into several lakh by managing the reimbursement of funds from the Government exchequer.
Sources said the CBI was in the process of identifying all NGOs responsible for committing the fraud on the name of imparting skill training to the unemployed people to earn their livelihood but their number could be at least 15 and the amount swindled by them might run into several lakh or even crores.
The CBI special teams have set off further investigations into both the cases to detect actual amount of embezzlement and the officers, officials involved in them apart from the heads of the NGOs.
The enquiries have been entrusted to CBI Inspectors Deedar Singh, Om Prakash and Lalit Kumar.
Follow our WhatsApp channel