DEHRADUN: Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate court of Roorkee in Uttarakhand’s Haridwar district has ordered the police to file an FIR against the director of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee and other staffers for the alleged financial fraud in scholarships, central grants and construction money.
The order, dated December 23, 2020, came as the court was hearing a petition filed by a former IIT staffer Menpal Sharma.
The petitioner alleged that IIT director Ajit Kumar Chaturvedi, Dean of IIT’s Sponsored Research & Industrial Consultancy (SR IC) Mani s h Shrikhande, Assistant Registrar (SRIC) Jitendra Dimri, Dhiraj Upadhyay, junior assistant (SR IC) and Rajesh Kumar clerk (SRIC), committed financial fraud worth crores for over more than a decade by siphoning off the money of grants and other aids to their bank accounts.
Sonika Srivastava, in charge media cell of the institute, in an 8-point statement, said the Institute will continue to extend full cooperation to the police.
She said: "IIT Roorkee lodged a complaint with the police on 18th June 2020, regarding the incident of a Senior Assistant in the SRIC office using fraudulent means to siphon funds into his personal bank account. This fraud in the SRIC office was detected and reported by Dean SRIC and Assistant Registrar (SRIC). The concerned staff member was suspended and a committee was constituted to look into the entire matter.
"After the completion of disciplinary proceedings, the concerned staff member has been removed from the services of the institute. Following up on its police complaint of 18th June 2020, IIT Roorkee lodged an FIR on 11th December 2020. After the FIR by IIT Roorkee on 11th December 2020, the matter is already being investigated by the police, and a few days back the police has already recorded the statement of the Registrar. The Institute was not a party in the court case based on the same incident, which has been reported in the media. The Institute will continue to extend full cooperation to the police.”