Jamshedpur, April 22: A senior officer of BSNL’s Jamshedpur Secondary Switching Area (SSA), suspended for his alleged involvement in a Rs 8.6 crore scam in 2004, has been reinstated in the same capacity and in a more responsible position after getting a clean chit from the CBI.
Senior officials at BSNL office in Jamshedpur claimed that the tainted official, S.K. Madhukar, had resumed duty in the same post a week ago. “He is very much in the job now. The CBI has given him a clean-chit in Indian Telephone Card (ITC) scam,” an official said.
The confirmation from senior BSNL officials notwithstanding, mystery shrouds Madhukar’s reinstatement. The officials here seem surprised as to how he managed to get a clean chit from the premier investigating agency in a strong case like the ITC scam.
The BSNL general manager of Jamshedpur SSA, R.K. Mishra, was not available for comments on Madhukar’s reinstatement, but the sub-divisional officer of Jamshedpur SSA, D.N. Singh, confirmed that he had been given the same position. He, however, declined to comment on the clean chit given by the CBI.
Madhukar was a divisional engineer officer, Telecom (internal), in 2004 when he was suspended. He has now been reinstated as divisional engineer officer, Telecom (new services) in Jamshedpur SSA, a post considered to be more sensitive and responsible.
In 2004, a racket in the India Telephone Card (ITC) had been operating and a scam involving Rs 8.6 crore came to the fore. The then general manager of Jamshedpur SSA, A.K. Srivastava, handed over the case to the CBI. After an initial probe, the CBI found Madhukar prima facie guilty in the scam.
Soon after his name figured in the scam, the BSNL authorities suspended Madhukar immediately.
The CBI dug further into the activities of Madhukar and found that he was involved in a number of other unfair activities that caused the department heavy losses.
Besides being posted as DET (internal), Madhukar was assigned the duty to print ITCs. The cards were printed in Jamshedpur and Dhanbad. It was found that Madhukar did not show the records of the number of ITCs printed and sold at that time.
As a result, BSNL’s regional office in Calcutta raked up the matter and the accounts provided by the Jamshedpur office of the telecom department did not match with the figures available with the Calcutta regional office.
Apart from the charge of bungling money in ITC scam, Madhukar was accused of tampering the telephone lines of his office as well as his residence for commercial purposes. He allegedly connected various public telephone booths’ line with his office and residence telephone connections so that STD and ISD calls could be made using the private line.
The public telephone booth operators allegedly gave a share of the money collected by them to the officer.
