The Hindu : Police, ACB on funds' trail

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jun 18, 2002

Southern States

Southern States - Andhra Pradesh-Hyderabad

Police, ACB on funds' trail

By M. Malleswara Rao

Hyderabad June 17. At the instance of the Government, efforts are on both by the police and the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) for recovery of the lost funds in the scholarship muddle, Rs. 17.95 crores, from the accused, especially R. Motia Naik, even as he was presented before the 21st Metropolitan Magistrate along with the seven others arrested yesterday.

The magistrate ordered remanding them to judicial custody. The ACB swung into action following a similar anonymous call about the scandal some time ago and built up a "disproportionate assets'' case of its own independently of police investigation, climaxing it with searches today by teams of its sleuths at Sanali Heavens in Ameerpet where Mr. Naik lives and at Kadthal in Mahabubnagar district where he owns some properties. According to B. Malla Reddy, ACB Joint Director, the teams did not come across cash or documents as anticipated as, such searches had already been made by Hyderabad's City Crime Station.

The ACB filed a case saying that Mr. Naik owned properties disproportionate to his known sources of income. Mr. Reddy said they could not do the same regarding other accused as they were to crosscheck several aspects and build up data prior to that. But, "certainly, we are proceeding against all of them from disproportionate-assets'' angle. According to an estimate made by the CCS, the properties identified so far as having been acquired by the accused -- either Mr Naik, D. Shankar Rao or U. Santhosh Kumar, both district social welfare officers at different points of time for Hyderabad district, are worth Rs 30-40 crores.

K. Narasimha Rao, DCP heading the CCS investigation team, says that the properties which have already been confiscated, will be disposed of and the proceeds so realised will be more than sufficient to make good the loss. If necessary, provisions of the Revenue Recovery Act will be invoked. The outstanding balances found in the accounts of Andhra and Canara banks at Hyderabad and Kadthal, and other banks, if any, will add to this.

In a related development, the Social (SC), BC and ST welfare departments announced a few more initiatives to tighten the scholarship system -- from sanctioning to disbursement to students which would require the authorities concerned to computerise the entire procedure and publicise the names of students together with the amounts sanctioned through newspaper ads and put the same on the Internet. They would also require them to bring out a booklet on the proceedings to be followed for the sanction and disbursement and make them available to all the elected representatives such as MLAs. Hereafter, the scholarships, a Sankshema Bhavan spokesman said, releases and drawals would be "a quarterly affair.'' The Andhra Pradesh BC Welfare Association president, R. Krishnaiah, in a statement here today, suspected the spread of the scam in other districts also, running into crores, and also in other public-contact departments like Health, Education, Irrigation, Excise and Commercial Taxes and demanded a full-scale inquiry into all of them. He wanted to know as to what happened to Rs. 2 crores sanctioned by the BC Welfare Department for purchase of lands of Nizam Sugar Factory as house-sites to BC beneficiaries way back in 1995.

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Police, ACB on funds' trail