The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has booked four Railway officials and two top functionaries of a private company for allegedly causing a loss of crores to the exchequer by tampering with bills raised against the execution of work contracts.
The accused officials have been identified as the then deputy chief engineer S.P. Deshmukh, assistant executive engineer (Construction) Pradip Kumar Sharma, assistant finance adviser Tapeswar Rabha and one Bimal Dey. Nayak Infrastructure Private Limited’s managing director Ananta Charan Nayak and director Biswajit Nayak have also been named.
It is alleged that the Price Variation Contract (PVC) bills of works along the Silchar-Sairang Line under the North-East Frontier Railway was manipulated and excess payments made to the contractor for projects related to construction of tunnels, bridges and other allied works.
During a sample check of the PVC bills passed by the Silchar Construction Unit, senior Railway officials found that bills related to seven works were indeed tampered with, allegedly in collusion with the engineers and officials of the Finance Department (Construction) in Silchar and Maligaon.
The FIR alleges that the company had submitted forged bills by prefixing digit ‘1’ to the actual amounts. A bill for over ₹1.80 crore was allegedly changed to ₹11.80 crore, another bill for more than ₹2.92 crore became over ₹12.92 crore. Eight such instances were detected.
While it is not clear if all such bills were cleared, the FIR mentions that some accused officials had made recommendations for payments against various bills. They were allegedly approved by the then deputy chief engineer, resulting in a loss of ₹7.81 crore to the Railway, and corresponding gains to the accused persons.
