An air of panic has engulfed the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) after at least ₹2.53 crore were siphoned off from it's coffers. Two days after the First Information Report (FIR) was filed with the police, the accused have yet not been arrested. So how was such a massive heist pulled off from the Ministry that is housed in the heart of Lutyen's Delhi?

Public Financial Management System (PFMS) used to make payments in the Ministry was manipulated in this case, a MoHFW official explained. The official said that the normal payment procedure in PFMS involved generating a sanction from the Programme Division (PD) on the system as well as a physical bill being submitted to the Drawing and Disbursing Officer (DDO). “The DDO prepares the bill, basis the sanction and submits it through online mode, and a physical copy of the same is also submitted to the Pay and Accounts Office (PAO). The bill is then available at Dealing Hand (DH) level in the PAO online and in physical form. This is further passed on to the Pay and Accounts officer who passes the bill online, creates the batch for the various bills passed and makes the payment digitally,” the official said.

According to the official, a fake parallel identity (ID) of the Pay and Accounts Officer (PAO) was created on PFMS by the accused, which may have been approved by Principal Accounts Office (HQ). “From the fake PAO ID, further fake IDs of Drawing and Disbursement Officer (DDO), Dealing Hand (DH) at Pay and Accounts Office were created and false sanctions/bills were created and money was transferred digitally through Bank of Baroda to multiple accounts in different banks,” the official told Businessline.

MoHFW sought help of the Delhi Police's Cyber Cell on Saturday, to investigate computers which were used to create fake IDs. “The Cyber Cell will examine seized computers after making a mirror image of the machines to examine how the heist occurred,” said an official.

On scrutiny of records, MoHFW officials observed that five transactions amounting to ₹ 2.53 crore were made fraudulently, details of which they handed over to Delhi police. The Pay and Accounts Secretariat filed a first information report (FIR) on December 27.

The police officials have frozen five bank accounts in which the amount was transferred. In spite of freezing the suspicious bank accounts, ₹25 lakh has already been withdrawn from the accounts, stated the police. “The remainder money remains in the frozen bank accounts. We are in the process of ascertaining the owners of the bank accounts to which money was transferred. The accused has not been arrested yet. But we suspect that it is someone from the inside who has committed the heist as they knew how to manipulate the IT systems,” said a police official.

Officials suspect that the fraud had been ongoing since December 19 or before.

The room of PAO (Secretariat) in Nirman Bhawan has been sealed, after the fraud came to light. MoHFW realised it was being duped when the PAO office was counter-checking digital bills against physical hard copies of bills. “It was realised that there was a misappropriation as the amounts in digital and physical bills were not adding up,” said the official.

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