New Delhi: Years after he had retired, a staggering Rs 3.15 crore was disbursed as ‘salary’ to Jharkhand police sub-inspector Upendra Singh over two years between May 2024 March this year. Naturally, he received none of the money released in his name.
Even if he had not retired, he’d have received anything between Rs 12-13 lakh during that period, given a sub-inspector’s monthly salary in the range of Rs 50,000 to Rs 55,000. The massive discrepancy in the books raised eyebrows within the office of the principal accountant general in Ranchi.
Flagged by the office of the PAG, the state’s treasury auditor, the government ordered the treasury department to look into the bank account of Singh, who was posted in Bokaro.
The department found out the excess disbursement from the treasury was done under a deeper conspiracy through widespread manipulation of payee IDs on the finance department’s Kuber platform—which is used to manage all government money transactions including salaries—and the exploitation of basic system loopholes.
The bank account that received the crores of government funds, disbursed as Singh’s salary, allegedly belonged to the wife of another policeman, who had been posted as an accountant in the office of the Bokaro Superintendent of Police during the period of the alleged offence.
He initially denied his role in the voluminous forgery, but later allegedly confessed to tampering with Singh’s date of birth and bank account to usurp the funds after they were disbursed in Singh’s name.
The findings in Bokaro prompted the state’s finance department to order earlier this month a thorough verification of all transactions carried out under the salary head from treasury accounts across all districts.
The investigation busted a massive fraud in Hazaribagh amounting to Rs 28 crore over a decade.
As matters escalated, Leader of the Opposition Babu Lal Marandi wrote to Chief Minister Hemant Soren last week, demanding a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation or one overseen by a judge of the Jharkhand High Court.
Responding to questions about the allegedly illegal disbursement of treasury funds, Soren told reporters earlier this week the government has taken the issue with the utmost seriousness and that the investigation will not spare anyone found guilty.
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The portal loopholes
In the case of the fraudulent disbursals in Bokaro, the investigators allegedly found 63 disbursements over 25 months under the guise of salary. This disbursal was made based on entries prepared by Kaushal Kumar Pandey, who was handling the e-Kuber portal and is alleged to have tampered with the employee’s key details.
The probe revealed that Pandey allegedly edited Singh’s bank account and date of birth to match his wife’s on the Kuber portal, without such massive tampering coming to the notice of any other official.
The police questioned Pandey last week after confirming the beneficiary account belonged to his wife.
Police said Pandey revealed the entire plot to them. Overall, Pandey allegedly orchestrated the fraud amounting to Rs 4.29 crore over 25 months, Bokaro Superintendent of Police Harvinder Singh told the media.
As Bokaro’s case progressed, treasury departments in other districts also conducted their investigation. The case in Hazaribagh has proven to be the biggest of them all.
The Hazaribagh district police identified fraudulent withdrawals amounting to Rs 28 crore over the last decade since the e-Kuber portal was formalised for withdrawals from the treasury.
The police in Hazaribagh arrested five accused in connection with the fraud, including three constables posted in the district police accounts department.
The district treasury department allegedly found 21 accounts fraudulently linked to genuine payee IDs on the online platform used to disburse payments from treasury accounts.
ThePrint spoke to multiple sources in the Jharkhand Police to understand the broader ways the modus operandi flourished.
They said the frauds did not spare even the ids created in the name of baal arakshak, who are employed on compassionate grounds. They perform police duties, but are given salaries through a temporary Payee ID valid until they reach 18 years of age.
However, some of those Payee IDs were retained illegally. Singh had retired in 2016 as a regular police IS and his Payee id was also similarly retained.
“They (the frauds) created random Payee IDs, while also using temporary Payee IDs made for baal arakshak beyond their legally permissible timeline. Ideally, these Payee IDs should have been disabled once those baal arakshaks attained adulthood and their employment was formalised,” a Jharkhand Police officer told ThePrint.
Salary inflation through numerical prefixing
Sources aware of the case details said that senior officers in the state had access to the final list of employees who were supposed to be paid salaries. “The window (on Kuber platform) shared with the senior officers, heading the treasury department, had the correct list of employees and the amount to be credited, leading to smooth approval each time,” another officer said.
However, at the last stage before the final disbursal from the department, a random number was prefixed in some cases, inflating the payment to the bank account by a huge amount. The overall tally in the salary list prepared on the Kuber platform remained unchanged, which did not raise immediate suspicion of forgery, officials said.
“Such a high level of excess disbursement should have been flagged by the treasury department itself, but the syndicate had understood the loophole around lax scrutiny, further emboldening them to continue doing the exercise over and over again,” a government source admitted.
However, the syndicate never left any of the payees whose accounts were tampered with without their monthly salary and exact amount, leaving no “victims” and creating a semblance of normalcy. This, officials emphasised, meant there were no complainants, who were directly affected by the plot.
“After receiving the amount from the treasury, these accused used to deposit the same amount of money that a person is supposed to be paid in a month through a cheque. Since the account holders were not as technology savvy and had no disruptions to their monthly payments, there were no immediate alarms raised,” the police officer explained.
The Hazaribagh district police has so far identified one Shambhu Kumar, a constable in service since 2009, as the mastermind behind the entire plot in the district.
A native of Gaya in Bihar, Shambhu allegedly revealed during interrogation that he understood the loopholes and lack of checks and balances in the Kuber system and exploited it over a decade, according to sources.
The amount thus siphoned from the treasury account has been used to purchase land plots in Gaya, Ranchi, and Hazaribagh, in their own or their family members’ names. Illegal proceeds have also been used to purchase SUVs such as the Innova, Thar, and Scorpio, as well as other luxury lifestyle goods, said the sources.
While cases in Bokaro and Hazaribagh flagged fraudulent disbursements in the names of police personnel, the treasury department in Ranchi has also busted a similar fraud by employees of the Institute of Animal Health and Production.
According to the FIR filed at the Ranchi Kotwali Police Station, two employees of the institute, Munindra Kumar and Sanjeev Kumar, manipulated their salary structures and illegally disbursed around Rs 2.93 crore over the three financial years, between 2023-24 and 2025-26.
The state’s Finance Minister Radha Krishna Kishore has already ordered a statewide probe and review of treasury withdrawals where accountants and bill clerks have been posted for long durations. He has also asked the state’s finance secretary to compile a detailed report of withdrawals made under salary heads across the state.
(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)
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