An additional district magistrate was arrested from Jamalpur in Munger district on Wednesday on the charge of siphoning off public funds under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) in Dharhara block of Munger district.
A police team led by the station police house officer (SHO) of Dharhara police station, Brajesh Kumar, took Mukesh Kumar Agarwal into custody and produced him in the court of Chief Judicial Magistrate Manoj Kumar Sinha, who remanded him in judicial custody in Munger divisional jail for two weeks.
Agarwal was accused of embezzling of several lakhs under the job scheme in Dharhara block when he was the programme officer of Munger district in 2006-07. The case was lodged against Agarwal on the statement of his successor Manoj Kumar.
An initial probe by the police revealed that money was withdrawn in the names of fictitious persons. “Such anomalies have been found in different panchayats of the block concerned,” the SHO said.
A similar complaint was received at the chief minister’s janata durbar from Raksa panchayat in Muzaffarpur. SP (vigilance) Upendra Prasad Sinha was asked to probe the allegations.
During investigation, Sinha found that funds amounting to Rs 1 crore were siphoned off by the officials and people’s representative of the panchayat concerned between 2006 and 2010. “Only 17 per cent of the work was actually done,” the report submitted by the SP (vigilance) to the vigilance court revealed.
Sinha said the report has already been submitted to the vigilance court. Sources in the vigilance bureau said another complaint had been lodged by the bureau in connection with irregularities in MGNREGA in Muzaffarpur district.
Preliminary investigation conducted by the bureau has revealed that about 70-80 per cent of work under MGNREGA had been done on paper only and funds misappropriated. Complaints about alleged irregularities in the implementation of the centrally-sponsored scheme in Vaishali district have also been received at the CM’s janata durbar.
Sources said that former Araria SP S. Lande also unearthed such a fraud in the utilisation of MGNREGA funds in Karghair panchayat under Narpatganj block of the district last year. FIRs were lodged against the Karghair postmaster, Vishnu Deo Sah, programme officer Ravindra Nath, panchayat head Ravilal Rishideo and rojgar sevak Prahlad Mahto.
The police headquarters has asked the economic offences unit of criminal investigation department to look into complaints of financial irregularities in execution of different welfare schemes.
