MADURAI: The district police here have recommended to the State government to transfer to the cyber crime cell of the Crime Branch CID, the job guarantee scheme scandal that was unearthed here, claimed sources.
According to sources, the District Crime Branch (DCB) officials , who conducted the preliminary inquiry into the alleged fraud in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) scheme, submitted the case details to IG Murugan. After a review, the senior official suggested including provisions of the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000, to strengthen the case. The act deals with technology in the field of e-governance and e-banking, as well as penalties and punishments for cyber crimes. However, police officials here told him that there was no facility to probe the cyber crime case., following which the suggestion was made to transfer it..
Earlier, the DCB police had filed a case against 15 persons, including three staff, under section 420 IPC for cheating, sections 407 and 409 of IPC (criminal breach of trust) among other provisions of the IPC.
Meanwhile, Madurai DRDA is verifying details of beneficiaries in the district to find out if there were similar instances of fraud elsewhere in the district.
At Usilampatti, the BDO had sent the hard copy of details of 672 persons employed at Erumarpatti and Mannur village to MGNREGA office in Chennai. But when these details were uploaded to the MGNREGA’s system server, it was inflated to show that as many as 1,200 were employed under the scheme. This allegedly led to a loss of `30 lakhs this financial year.