Vigilance nabs sacked Punjabi varsity security supervisor in fake hiring scam

Patiala, August 28

The Vigilance Bureau (VB) has arrested a sacked security supervisor, Rupinder Singh, of Punjabi University, Patiala, in a fake recruitment scam.

Rupinder embezzled lakhs of rupees by recruiting his son, who is settled abroad, and his domestic help.

The scam came to light in 2023 following which the university conducted an investigation and handed over the matter to the Vigilance. During the Vigilance probe, entire fraud came to the fore and a case was registered against him on August 2.

From 2011 to 2021, the university had hired security guards and sanitation workers on a contractual basis through e-tender and manual system.

A committee was formed by the Vice-Chancellor to fill the vacancies. The chairman was the Dean Academic Affairs, while the registrar, finance officer, security officer and in-charge campus maintenance were its members.

On the recommendation of this committee and approval given by the Vice-Chancellor, an agreement was signed with five firms.

According to the Vigilance, Rupinder himself filled up the recruitment forms of his son Gurpreet Singh and his maid, Kuldeep Kaur, who worked at his house.

He used to fix working hours of security personnel and got the raw register signed by them. Later, Rupinder used to mark their attendance in the final register of the university and sent it to the firms concerned.

Arvinder Singh, a security guard, claimed that the security office used two attendance registers — one for temporary and another for the final attendance. He alleged that a number of individuals who had not worked at the university were marked present in the final attendance register.

The Vigilance found that Rupinder’s son Gurpreet Singh had gone abroad in 2015, while Kuldeep worked as a cleaner at his house. Rupinder used to give Kuldeep Rs 10,000 in lieu of marking attendance in the raw register. Rupinder had drawn Rs 6.7 lakh in the name of Gurpreet from September 2015 to June 2021 and Rs 2.56 lakh in the name of Kuldeep from December 2019 to September 2021.

As per the bank statement of Kuldeep, Rs 1.84 lakh and Rs 6.37 lakh were transferred to Gurpreet’s several bank accounts.