Dahod: A former Gujarat-cadre IAS officer has been arrested in Dahod district in connection with a scam wherein government grants worth Rs 18.59 crore were allegedly secured by racketeers through fake offices for implementing "irrigation-related projects", police said on Tuesday.
The development came a month after a similar scam was busted in Chhota Udepur district where Rs 4.16 crore in government grants were diverted by setting up a fake office of the executive engineer for irrigation projects. "Former IAS officer BD Ninama, who took a voluntary retirement in February, was arrested on Monday by Dahod district police for allegedly helping other accused in carrying out the scam when he was the project administrator of the state government's 'Tribal Area Sub Plan' for Dahod district between 2019 and 2022," said Superintendent of Police, Rajdeepsinh Zala.
Earlier, Dahod Police had arrested the scam kingpin Sandeep Rajput and his accomplice Ankit Suthar, said Zala. According to the police, Rajput had allegedly set up six fake offices in the name of the executive engineer of the irrigation project division in Dahod to get government grants worth Rs 18.59 crore for the implementation of 100 bogus projects, for which proposals were cleared by the office of the Dahod Project Administrator between 2018 and 2022.
"Rajput used to pose as a government officer, attend meetings and also sign documents as an officer. His accomplice Suthar had opened bank accounts in the name of those fake government offices to get the grants. While the fraud was going on since 2018, Ninama cleared 82 out of a total of 100 bogus proposals during his tenure between 2019 and 2022," said Zala. Last month, Chhota Udepur police arrested Rajput and his accomplice Abu-Bakr Saiyyad, a government contractor, for allegedly securing Rs 4.16 crore in government grants by setting up a fake office.
The matter came to light when the office of the project administrator in Chhota Udepur inquired about a proposal he received from the fake office seeking Rs 3.75 crore for certain irrigation projects. A probe revealed that similar proposals from the fake office for projects worth Rs 4.16 crore were cleared in 2021-22 and 2022-23, and the funds were released in the e-payment mode.
In view of that case, Dahod's Project Administrator for Tribal Area Sub Plan, Smit Lodha, asked his office to check the past records to ascertain if the accused were involved in a similar scam in Dahod or not, as per the FIR registered by Dahod police on November 10. When accounts were checked, it was revealed that Rajput and other accused had secured government grants worth Rs 18.59 crore by opening six fake offices, such as "Executive Engineer, Narmada irrigation canal division", "Deputy Engineer, small irrigation project" and "Executive Engineer, Pipeline project division".
The FIR stated that grants were released and deposited into the bank accounts of these fake offices after their proposals to carry out irrigation projects in the district were cleared by project administrators, including Ninama, from 2018 till March 2023.
