Madhya Pradesh: Warehouse owner, staff booked for ‘fake’ wheat procurement

Police in Jabalpur district of Madhya Pradesh have registered a fraud case against the owner of a warehouse and the staff of procurement centre for fudging and inflating records about wheat procured.
The accused allegedly recorded 52kg of wheat stored in gunny bags, that had capacity of only 50 kg. Moreover against the sanctioned procurement of 35,000 quintals of wheat, they fudged records showing procurement of 36,200 quitals. After complaints of irregularities in against the private warehouse in Chargawan area of the district, collector Saurabha Suman ordered a surprise inspection of records.

Gunny bags weighed 49.5 kg instead of 52 kg as recorded in stock register

When a joint team of officials of the state warehousing corporation and state civil supplies corporation checked stock records and tallied gunny bags there was a mismatch. Gunny bags that were randomly picked and weighed had only around 49.5 kilograms of wheat instead of 52 kg as recorded in stock register.

In the joint inspection was carried out on May 20. The inquiry officials found that the procurement centre was provided with 70,000 gunny bags, each having a capacity of holding 50 kilograms of wheat for procuring 35,000 quintals of wheat. But, the computer generated procurement report at the warehouse showed that 36,200 quintals of wheat was procured at this centre. Thus around 1200 quintals of fake procurement was shown in records, said official sources. Apart from this, the inspection team found less wheat in the randomly picked bags. The team found fake procurement of about 2,000 quintals of wheat including shortage in gunnny bags, said official sources.
A case of fraud has been registered at Chargawan station against owner of the warehouse, Narendra Tomar and computer operator at the warehouse level procurement centre, Vivek Rajput.

This article has been republished from The Times of India