As part of its ‘Taruner Swapna’ project, the government recently gave Rs 10,000 to students of Class 11 and 12 to help them purchase tablets. However, school authorities and parents raised complaints that the money has not been received in the account of the eligible students. They have further alleged that these students are victims of cyber crime.

CM Banerjee has asked officials to find out why the beneficiary students did not receive the funds and also identify the culprits. Additionally, Chief Secretary Manoj Pant has sent instructions regarding the incident to the Secretary of the Education Department and has sought a full report on it. Also, the beneficiary students, whose money has gone to another account due to the alleged ‘hack’, should be sent their money into their bank account with immediate effect.

Recently, four schools in the Purba Medinipur district raised a complaint that most of the students of Class 11 and 12, did not receive money to purchase tablets. After investigation, the officials of the district education department came to know that the bank account numbers of 70 students of Class 11, from those four schools, were hacked and the money was transferred into the fraudsters’ account. As a result, even though the government sent the money to buy tabs, it went to the fraudsters’ account.

Following this, similar complaints were received from different districts like Burdwan, Murshidabad. Under the ‘Taruner Swapna’ scheme, the school authorities send a list of students along with their bank account number to the state education department and the government accordingly sends an amount of Rupees 10,000 to the account’s of the children to buy smartphones and tablets.