After financial bungling, fake receipt scam surfaces in Bhiwani civic body

Tribune News Service

Deepender Deswal

Bhiwani, April 17

The Bhiwani Municipal Council continues to hog the limelight for the wrong reasons. After embezzlement of funds having a tentative estimate of about Rs 14 crore, yet another scam of issuing fake receipts to the consumers by officials in the Municipal Council has come to the fore.

The police have arrested two persons after registering a case against the accused, including the president and vice-president of the MC. The president and some other officials are already in jail in connection with another case of financial bungling by transferring money from the bank accounts of the MC to private accounts.

The police have arrested a former computer operator of the MC, Ranjeesh, who was employed on the outsourcing policy for a brief period of about two-three months and his accomplice Harish. Rajneesh was employed with the MC in 2017 briefly and later left the job. But he continued to operate from the premises of the MC office apparently under the protection of the higher ups in the MC office.

Sushil Verma, complainant in the case, stated that the scam runs into about Rs 10 crore to Rs 20 crore and even more. More shockingly, he stated, the accused had altered the status of the properties of a large number of owners which had become a major problem for the owners now.

Disclosing the modus operandi, Verma said the accused used to issue receipt of property tax, house tax or solid waste management tax to property owners who used to work as a conduit in the MC. They used to get the exact sum of the tax from the consumer and also issue him a receipt of the same amount. But while taking a print out of the same receipt for official use i.e. to deposit the tax amount in the state exchequer, they used to edit the receipt by downscaling the amount. Explaining further, Verma said, an owner of a 100 square yard commercial plot needed to deposit Rs 60,000 as property tax at the rate of Rs 600 per square yard. “The accused used to take the exact amount from the consumer and also issue him/her a receipt of the same amount. But while taking the print out for the official use, they used to change the status of the property in the hypertext markup language (HTML) file from commercial property to residential property and showed reduced amount of Rs 12,000 in the receipt which was property tax for residential plot (at the rate of Rs 120 per square yard) and thus deposited this much amount (Rs 12000), in the state exchequer. Now, the particular property’s status as per the record was changed from the commercial to residential. In many cases they used to show the property located in the lal dora and thus show zero amount as tax while the property actually was located out of the lal dora.

The police have registered a case under Sections 420, 467, 478 and 471 of the IPC against MC chairman Ran Singh Yadav, vice-chairman Maman Chand, an MC member, Narender Sharaf and Rajneesh, and handed over the probe to the economic cell of the Bhiwani police. However, the police officials were quiet over the progress in the probe stating that they would take further action on the basis of the progress in inquiry.

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