Two forest officials loot Rs 35 lakh with fake Kovai Courtrallam entry tickets

COIMBATORE: The forest department has placed a forester under suspension for siphoning off several lakh of rupees by issuing fake entry tickets to tourists at Kovai Courtrallam, a popular tourist spot in the district. District Forest Officer (DFO) TK Ashok Kumar conducted an inquiry which revealed the malpractice and suspended forester Rajesh Kumar on Friday.

According to sources, Rajesh Kumar started to swindle money along with the former Boluvampatti range forest officer T Saravanan, who is currently working in Madurai division, for the last one and half a year.  Conservator of Forests (Coimbatore division) S Ramasubramanian has written to officials in Madurai division recommending action against Saravanan.

Sources said the ranger and forester used an additional billing machine to issue tickets to tourists visited the eco tourism spot and took the collected money into their pockets. Entry ticket for adult is priced at Rs 60 for adults and Rs 30 for children.

The scam came to light after senior officials checked the reasons for low revenue despite high footfall of visitors. Officials started monitoring the ticket issuing system and found that one out of two machines at the entry point was used to print fake entry tickets.

Following that printing machine for reduced to one by officials in the spot. However, Rajesh Kumar (36) used to swindle money even after Saravanan was transferred by issuing duplicate tickets to forenoon visitors that were generated for the morning visitors.

“The defrauded money is estimated up to Rs 35 lakh. The sum was recovered from the forester and deposited into the eco-tourism committee’s account,” DFO TK Ashok Kumar said. Ramasubramanian added that a woman, who worked at the ticketing counter, is also being questionned.