The Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption(DVAC) has booked S.Revathy, a joint director in Commissionerate of Social Welfare and six other individuals, for allegedly demanding and obtaining undue pecuniary advantage from various District Social Welfare Officers and Programme officers of Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) in the guise of helping them in vigilance enquiries.
The accused officer - S. Revathy, has been holding the post of Joint Director, Nutritious Meal Program, Commissionerate of Social Welfare in Panagal building. She is wife of a retired police officer.
The government, through Department of Social Welfare, implements various welfare schemes / programmes to benefit women, children, elderly persons in all the districts of the State. The District social welfare officer (DSWO) and Programme Officer of ICDS Scheme are nodal officers for implementing such schemes. Certain financial powers are delegated to these programme officers to spend towards implementing welfare schemes.
The accused officer Revathy, with the objective of obtaining bribe from sub-ordinate officials of her department, entered into conspiracy with six individuals. In pursuance of the conspiracy, she had abused her position to gain undue pecuniary advantage, by fabricating false petitions of corruption / irregularities against said District level Programme Officers of ICDS and then contacted these officers over phone / WhatsApp offering her support in closing these petitions by way of a favorable departmental enquiry, the DVAC alleged in the FIR.
On this pretext, she had directly and through six individuals demanded and accepted huge bribes during various instances by various modes. She had engaged a key middleman A-2 R Govindarajan, who was working in Galaxy Office Automation Pvt, Anna Salai to collect major portion of bribe amount on her behalf. She also engaged five other private persons- S.Rajkumar, Kalicharan, Andrew Larson, Babu, and B.Vinayagamoorthy to receive bribes into their account on her behalf.
She persuaded some of the programme officers, ICDS serving in her department to transfer / deposit money into various above bank accounts of middlemen. In turn, five accused had transferred part of bribe amount to A2 -Govindarajan’s bank account and part of bribe to Revathy's bank account or by cash deposit machine. Finally Govindarajan had withdrawn the cash from his bank account and paid most of the bribe in cash to her. Further, multiple bank transactions have taken place between she and others, the DVAC alleged.
Revathy and others were booked under the provisions of Indian Penal Code and Prevention of Corruption Act. The matter was taken up for investigation by K.Yuvaraj, Deputy Superintendent of Police, DVAC.
