NEW DELHI: Two persons, including a chartered accountant, have been arrested for allegedly cheating the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) of over Rs 3 crore under the pretext of the government-run SAMRIDH scheme for startups, police said on Tuesday.
The accused have been identified as Prashant Agarwal, director of the HPPL Foundation, and chartered accountant Sudhanshu Kumar Rakesh. The modus operandi of the duo involved exploiting the SAMRIDH scheme by making false representations to obtain government funds, failing to transfer the money to selected startups and covering up the fraud with forged financial reports, police said.
A case was registered on April 24 following a complaint by Rashi Sharma, authorised representative of MeitY Startup Hub (MSH), an independent body under Digital India Corporation. MSH oversees the Samridh scheme, launched to support start-ups through recognised accelerators.
HPPL Foundation was selected as one such accelerator and received Rs 3.04 crore from MSH to fund eight start-ups.
The investigations, however, revealed that Agarwal never disbursed the funds to the intended startups.
He instead misappropriated the amount and submitted fake and forged utilisation certificates to MSH, the officials said. The certificates were falsely attested under Rakesh’s name and seal. Agarwal also allegedly collected Rs 11 lakh from start-ups under the pretext of facilitating the release of government funds.
DCP (EOW) Amit Verma said, “Agarwal was arrested from Bengaluru on April 30. Based on his inputs, Rakesh was apprehended from Patna in Bihar.”