Vigilance Bureau arrests absconder accused of embezzlement worth crores in cooperative society

Chandigarh April 5, 2023:
          The Punjab Vigilance Bureau (VB) during its campaign against corruption, has arrested a former cashier Harpreet Singh of village Karnana, tehsil Banga, who was absconding in a multi-crore misappropriation case amounting to Rs. 7,14,07,596 in the Karnana multipurpose cooperative society limited, village Karnana, district SBS Nagar. He was absconding since seven months and arrested by the VB when he surrendered before the competent court at SBS Nagar on the directions of Punjab and Haryana High Court.
 

        Disclosing this here today, a spokesperson of the VB said there are about 1000 account holders/members besides six paid employees in the said cooperative society. It owns one petrol pump, one tractors besides agricultural machinery for cultivation of land on rental basis. Apart from this, the said society also sells insecticides and pesticides to its members/farmers. Various members of this society and NRIs of this village had deposited FDRs worth crores of rupees in the society.

          During the surprise checking by the technical team of the VB, it was found that the FDRs deposited and loans taken by the society members from 01-04-2018 to 31-03-2020 were embezzled to the tune of the Rs. 7,14,07,596. Besides this, it was also found that the accused had made discrepancies of Rs 36,36,71,952.

          During the investigation, it was also found that the secretary Inderjit Dhir had installed 2 computers in the society, in one of which he used to prepare record to cheat the members by showing the deposited entries to the members as genuine but on digging the data of the other computer, it has came to light that the above said secretary along with cashier and others used to feed the data according to the amount of fraud and presented it to the audit officers and other officials of the department.

          He informed that in this regard, the VB has registered an embezzlement case against 7 employees/members of the said society under FIR 15 dated 29-08-2022 under sections 406, 409, 420, 465, 468, 471, 477-A, 120-B of IPC and sections 13(1)A, 13(2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act at VB Police Station, Jalandhar.

          In this case accused former secretary Inderjit Dhir, cashier Harpreet Singh, Randhir Singh, Sukhwinder Singh, Ravinder Singh and Kamalit Singh (all members and residents of village Karnana) have been booked in this case and arrested five of them. Among the accused persons, the absconding former cashier Harpreet Singh has also been arrested. He said that raids were being conducted to arrest the remaining absconding secretary Inderjit Dhir and would be arrested soon.