In the Accountant General (AG) Office here, a significant pension fraud that cost the State exchequer close to Rs 2 crores has been uncovered.
With knowledge of the situation, the AG office’s administrators suspended Harkesh Meena, an employee who is accused of processing invalid pension cases by using forged signatures and dispatch numbers in collusion with two retired AG office employees and some treasury staff.
Sources claim that in September of this year, Rajaji Saproo, an employee of the AG office working at the Vijaypur Treasury in the Samba District, discovered that his signatures had been falsified in order to process and withdraw the pension of one Dhian Singh.
Saproo promptly reported the anomalies to the Jammu AG office after becoming aware of them so that it could be investigated further and appropriate action taken.
According to sources, the AG office came to the conclusion that one of their employees, Harkesh Meena, worked with two retired AG office employees and some treasury officials to process non-admissible pension cases using forged signatures and dispatch numbers.
Meena would keep all the pensioners’ records on hand and process the cases for illegitimate pensions using Rajaji Saproo’s fake identification and other employees’ signatures.
Following the substantiation of the role of Meena in the pension fraud, the AG Office suspended him and transferred the fraud case to Bakshi Nagar Police Station for a detailed investigation into the matter.
“The roles of two retired AG office employees and some treasury employees are also being investigated by the AG office,” they added.
Meanwhile, due to the loss of the significant amount to the State exchequer resulting from the misdeeds of the involved employees, Bakshi Nagar Police Station has requested the higher authorities for the transfer of the case to the central agencies for a thorough investigation.
Relevantly, similar examples of pension theft have been documented in other parts of the UT, particularly Srinagar, where departmental staff allegedly processed pensions using faked signatures and dispatch numbers while working in collusion with treasury staff. Pensions were sometimes withdrawn against deceased government personnel as well.
