CBI busts CSD goods diversion racket

CBI today exposed an alleged nexus between officials of a defence canteen in Ahmedabad and civilians involve in diverting subsidized goods meant for defence personnel to the open market.
Suspicious transactions of around Rs 2.12 crore are under the CBI scanner. The money was allegedly sent by private parties to civilian officials, sources said.
The Defence Ministry had earlier filed a complaint with CBI, alleging a nexus between officials of CSD area depot, Ahmedabad, Unit Run Canteen (URC) and civilians for diversion of large quantity of CSD stores to civil market.
From January to June last year, one of the URCs repeatedly submitted indents for a certain category of goods every month and collected supplies which was abnormal, the spokesperson said.

After registering a case against a civilian, Nitish Makhija, and unidentified officials of CSD in this regard, the investigating agency carried out searches at five locations, a CBI spokesperson said.
The raids were carried out at the residences of Nitish, his uncle Kundan Makhija, three public servants -- the then Assistant Manager S G Sambharkar, accountant D A Parmar and former cashier T V Makwana, who were posted at CSD depot.

CBI said that during the scrutiny of transactions, it came to light that a large number of payments were allegedly received from third party against indents of a particular URC.

Also, the supplies were shown to have been collected by an authorised representative of URC on each occasion.
Rs 1.83 crore were received by way of such third party payments in six months. Besides, there were a few other suspected transactions. The total amount of the fraudulent payments was 2.12 crores, the spokesperson said.