A 59-year-old woman has been arrested for her alleged involvement in the store item purchase scam at AIIMS, the police said on Saturday. She caused the government exchequer a loss of ₹13.8 crore.
Additional Commissioner of Police (Economic Offences Wing) RK Singh said that the accused has been identified as Sneh Rani Gupta, resident of Pitampura.
The police said that Dr Anoop Daga, Medical Superintendent of Dr. Rajendra Prasad Centre for Ophthalmic Sciences – AIIMS, lodged a complaint regarding embezzlement of government funds to the tune of ₹5 crore. The investigation revealed that funds worth ₹13.8 crore were misappropriated by the accused for purchasing linen items. “These items were purchased on basis of forged supply orders, no actual supply of items took place, and payment was released to the supplier firm in the name of M/s Sneh Enterprises,” Mr Singh said.
The police found that the items against which the payment was made were never delivered to AIIMS.
“Scrutiny of the e-way bills revealed that vehicles shown as used for delivery of those goods to AIIMS, never delivered the same at AIIMS Delhi on any of the dates mentioned on e-way bills. Scrutiny of GPS logs of the vehicles appearing on the e-way bills shows their locations out of Delhi. This firm was a supplier and in business with AIIMS since many years. All the manual and digital records maintained at AIIMs for the purpose of such supplies revealed criminal misdeeds of the accused in connivance with [the] staff of AIIMS,” Mr Singh said.
The police said that bills were raised by the concerned staff of AIIMS and got approved without knowledge of the competent officials of AIIMS. After getting these bills of ‘sham deliveries’ sanctioned, the cheated amount used to be transferred in the account of the firm M/s Sneh Enterprises.
Mr Singh said that the accused was arrested with the help of technical and human surveillance and further investigation is underway.
