Ranchi, May 8: A former contractual employee of National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) and her husband, arrested from their Ranchi home just after they landed from Mumbai last night in connection with a Rs 130-crore scam in the health programme, were remanded in judicial custody by a special CBI court today.
Ranjita Mishra, a contractual employee at the state NRHM's information education and communication division who was looking after publicity campaigns, is accused of misappropriating government funds to the tune of Rs 1.5 crore in the name of promoting health schemes in Jharkhand through her husband Sanjay Mishra's company City Advertiser.
Ranjita, who was close to then health secretary Pradeep Kumar, allegedly convinced him to issue advertisement orders to City Advertiser by terminating the contracts of other two companies already empanelled with the department.
Kumar, currently secretary in animal husbandry department, was principal secretary (health) from June 2008 to August 2009.
The couple went absconding sometime around May last year after the CBI probing the case, which popularly came to be referred as the medicine scam, filed a chargesheet against them.
"The CBI had received inputs that the couple was returning to Ranchi from Mumbai. Accordingly, a team was alerted. Today, they were produced before the special CBI court of Akhil Kumar, who forwarded them to Birsa jail in Ranchi," said investigating officer B.K. Singh.
According to CBI officers, Ranjita's elder sister Renuka, who is said to be working at the AIDS control division of NRHM, used her good ties with Kumar to get a job for her sibling on a contractual basis. That appointment was wrong, as the post in which Ranjita was taken did not exist.
Once Ranjita joined the NRHM, she allegedly managed to convince Kumar to empanel her husband's company City Advertiser with the department to issue advertisements related to works undertaken by the NRHM and its health programmes to the print and electronic media.
Kumar consequently removed the two advertisement agencies Gandhara and Ridge Advertising, already enrolled with the department, and roped in City Advertiser.
But no tender was floated.
Sanjay Mishra of City Advertiser was issued advertisement orders at exorbitant rates, which were much higher than the ones approved by the DAVP (Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity).
Moreover, checks were never done to see whether advertisement orders issued to City Advertiser were publishedelecast or not.
"Ranjita was looking after the advertisement section of NRHM while her husband was the proprietor of the agency that handled the publicity campaigns. She used to prepare bills that Kumar cleared without any check. We have evidence to show that even after Kumar was removed from the department, he cleared backdated cheques for Mishra," a CBI official said.
Apart from Mishras and Kumar, the other accused are former health minister Bhanu Pratap Shahi (currently in judicial custody in a money laundering case), former health secretary Siyaram Prasad Sinha, then state RCH officer Vijay Shanker Narayan Singh, department official Narendra Mohan, finance officer Pradyut Mukherjee and others.
