Mumbai Police has uncovered an alleged salary fraud in which payments worth Rs 6.5 crore were shown as disbursed to employees who were not part of the force.
The irregularity surfaced during a recent exercise to migrate records from the ‘Sevarth’ payroll software used in 2019–2020 to a new platform. During the transfer, officials found that salaries had been credited in the names of 10 individuals with no connection to the police department.
According to the complaint filed by a North Region police officer, the salaries were paid monthly from December 2019 to February 2020, and again from June 2020 to September 2020. Investigators suspect attendance registers and work records were forged to facilitate the entries.
An FIR has been registered against then administrative officials Ramkishan Goswami, Nagesh Talwadekar, Vijaya Sawan, head clerk Ajay Rathod and senior clerk Amol Meshram on charges including cheating, forgery, criminal conspiracy and breach of trust. Vijaya Sawan and Amol Meshram have been suspended for allegedly creating fake service numbers and pension scheme numbers to add the 10 names.
Police are also probing who operated the bank accounts opened in the names of the fake employees and where the money ultimately went. Similar, smaller irregularities have reportedly been detected in districts such as Dhule and Latur, following which a statewide audit of police salary disbursal procedures has been ordered.
