Nagpur: Making the first arrests in the NMC’s stationery scam, Sadar police on Sunday, rounded up two civic employees for their role in the scam. Mohan Padwanshi, a clerk with the General Administration Department (GAD) and Mohammed Ashfaque Ahmed, an auditor have been arrested.
According to police, the role of these two NMC employees surfaced during interrogation of suppliers, who generated bogus orders by using unauthorized stamps of civic officials to showcase orders for supply of stationery. However, the four supply firms did not supply the stationery and yet submitted the bills that were promptly cleared by the Finance Department. The accused Padwanshi allegedly used the ID and password of Assistant Commissioner, GAD, Mahesh Dhamecha to log into NMC’s file system to generate an order for supply of stationery to initiate the scam. The accused auditor, Ashfaque Ahme, is charged with dereliction of duty for failing to detect the unauthorized bills when there was no order generated.
Notably, Sadar police on Thursday had registered an offence against Manohar Sakore & Company’s Padmakar Kolba Sakore (55), Sushma Sakore (50), both resident of Jaiprakash Nagar; Manohar Sakore (70), a resident of Dakshinamurti Chowk, Mahal and Atul Sakore (40), a resident of New Nandanvan. As soon as the case was registered, the police started a probe with suppliers who were taken into custody. They spilled the beans as to how the scam was perpetuated. What has stumped the official circles that the scamsters’ strategy was so fine that they even managed to hoodwink the internal auditors who too are now in the soup. The way the order was generated, the stamps and signs was so real that it escaped the hawk eyes of auditors. Only when the bills went for cross checking did the lid on the scam got blown over leaving several red faces in NMC.
Now the role of two senior officials is under scrutiny, that of Assistant Commissioner, GAD, Mahesh Dhamecha, and all important Chief Account and Finance Officer (CAFO) Vijay Kolhe. They have been issued show cause notices seeking explanation even as a three member committee including two Additional Commissioners and one Deputy Commissioners are investigating the official lapses.
NMC sources said Sakore revealed involvement of two more NMC staffers, one from Health Department and other from Solid Waste Management Department. But police did not get any evidence proving involvement of these two staffers in the case. It is also learnt that Sakore had genuine contracts of health, library, birth and death registration departments for supply of various materials, and he prepared fake contracts of the same works. It became easy for him to prepare bogus contracts as he was already engaged in preparing genuine contracts. NMC has blacklisted eight agencies related to him on December 17.
