ROURKELA: Identities of 55 students of a private school in Sundargarh town were allegedly faked to misappropriate funds disbursed under pre-matric scholarship meant for ST, SC ad OBC students.
The fraud was committed in 2021-22 academic but came to fore last month after a general category student Arin Nanda found that that the scholarship money was withdrawn in his name. Arin’s father Sanjay Nanda, on August 22, had lodged a complaint at Town police station stating his son completed studies from Sundargarh Public School (SPS) in 2021-22.
Arin had applied for post-matric scholarship in the Odisha state scholarship portal on August 19 but was baffled to discover his name was already registered for pre-matric scholarship. Sanjay said his son’s personal details including Aadhaar number were misused and someone else’s photograph and bank account used to avail the pre-matric scholarship.
After coming to know about the scam, the trust secretary of the school RK Sarangi also lodged a complaint at the Town police station stating unknown miscreants had uploaded forged documents and fabricated information of 55 students of the school for the academic year 2021-22 and misappropriated funds without knowledge of the school and the students.
Sarangi sought a detailed inquiry into the scam and said its pattern appeared similar to another reported in 2021-22 in other schools of Odisha. Sundargarh district welfare officer (DWO) Pabitra Mohan Pradhan on August 22 had written to the ST & SC department citing pre-matric scholarship applications of 55 students of Sundargarh Public School were not verified by the block or district administration and got automatically forwarded to the department and was even sanctioned. Pradhan recommended the department to conduct a probe. “It appears to be a meticulously executed cyber crime in which the government portal might have been hacked,” he alleged.
It is learnt bank accounts of 44 students were shown attached to Chikili branch of Suryoday Small Finance Bank and 11 with the Sundargarh branch of Union Bank of India.
Sarangi said while Suryoday bank has no branch in Sundargarh town, on inquiry it was found that Union Bank of India accounts were used to transfer money with its Islampur branch. Town IIC Aditya Mahakud said police is waiting for relevant information from the department to expedite investigation into the case.