CBI to take handwriting samples of school officials

Bhanu P Lohumi

Tribune News Service

Shimla, August 14

The CBI, probing the Rs 250-crore scholarship scam in Himachal, will now take the handwriting samples of management officials of the erring educational institutions for matching these with the signatures in the vouchers and cheques for siphoning off the money to fake accounts.

The CBI is trying to ascertain whether the signatures in both documents are same or management officials transferred the money to fake accounts by fictitious signatures or got the blank cheques signed in advance from the students to usurp the scholarship money.

The matching of handwriting will give vital leads in identifying the culprits and speeding up investigations. CBI teams have raided a large number of institutions in Himachal, Punjab, Haryana and adjoining states and seized documents. It had questioned about 20 employees of private institutions and banks in Una and Ludhiana and recorded their statements.

The CBI had identified about 32,000 students whose scholarship money was not credited to their accounts. The fake accounts were opened by 272 private educational institutions in three nationalised banks, which are under the scanner.

Unearthed in Spiti

• Scholarships were not paid to SC/ST/OBC students and 80 per cent of their money was paid to private institutions
• The scam remained hidden as the people who created online portal for disbursement of scholarships and those who actually transferred the amount were same
• It was unearthed following reports that students of government schools in Spiti had not been paid scholarships for the past five years