Chotanagpur Khadi Gramodyog Sansthan’s outlet at Albert Ekka Chowk, which was raided on Thursday. (Prashant Mitra)

And now, corruption has frayed Bapu’s fabric of pride in Jharkhand.

The CBI on Thursday unearthed gross anomalies in the functioning of the Chotanagpur Khadi Gramodyog Sansthan (CKGS), an affiliate of the Centre’s Khadi Village Industry Commission (KVIC) and aided by the Jharkhand Khadi Gramodyog Board, raising the spectre of another ugly scam in a state notorious for embezzling funds.

The anti-corruption cell of the central investigating agency on Thursday raided outlets of the Chotanagpur khadi organisation (not state khadi centres as reported earlier) in Ranchi to detect that money provided for promotion of Gandhiji’s yarn was being siphoned off with the help of bogus invoices.

A senior CBI officer said the crack team had raided the Khadi-Saras mela premises at Morabadi, where CKGS had put up a stall, the organisation’s head office in Tiril, on the outskirts of the capital, and a retail outlet near Albert Ekka Chowk. The CKGS has 21 stores in the state.

“An invoice suggested supply of khadi products worth Rs 56 lakh from the CKGS head office to the stall at the fair and hundreds of cash memos showed a sales figure of Rs 37 lakh. However, only Rs 6,000 in cash and products worth Rs 2.5 lakh were found at the stall. The irregularities do not end here. Most items found during the raid appeared to be anything but the hand-spun khadi,” the CBI officer said.

Sources further said that their primary investigations had suggested that the invoices were forged to siphon off funds provided by Union and state governments for promotion of khadi, which is a symbol of India’s prolonged freedom struggle.

“The Centre reimburses 20 per cent and the state 10 per cent of production cost — as market development assistance (MDA) — to promote the hand-woven fabric. To assess production, invoice/cash memo is easy parameter. So, efforts were being made to claim more MDA with the forged documents. Though we have been able to detect the fraud for the first time, our investigations suggest that anomalies have been continuing for the past several years since the central and state subsidies have been given from April 1, 1957, to March 31, 2011,” a source maintained.

When confronted, state director of KVIC, P.M. Kantharia refused to comment on the activities of its affiliate. He, however, claimed that it was not easy to get MDA money because sale was not a parameter to assess production.

“A production target is given by KVIC according to the capacity of its affiliate after proper audit. It has nothing to do with sales,” he said.

Chairman of Jharkhand Khadi Gramodyog Board Jainandu too washed his hands of the matter, saying that the Chotanagpur khadi organisation was an affiliate of the central commission and the state had no say in its functioning. He also informed that the state board, which itself has seven khadi outlets, had not provided any assistance to CKGS for quite some time.

CBI sources said they had collected samples from the fair on its concluding day last night and sent them for laboratory tests this afternoon. “After tests, it will be clear whether handloom products were being sold in the name of khadi,” an officer said.

On why no FIR had been registered in the case so far, he said: “Unlike police, an FIR with the CBI is registered after proper verification of facts.”

Chotanagpur khadi officials could not be reached for comments.