Pension fund pilferage: 4 Durgapur steel staffs arrested
The Statesman | 13 November 2024
An accounts department employee of SAIL’s Durgapur Steel Plant was arrested today on charges of multi-crore pilferage of pension funds meant for the plant employees.
Today, Dhrubojyoti Roy, an assistant with the accounts department was arrested.
Earlier, the police had booked Pinaki Ranjan Mukherjee, an accounts officer of the SAIL plant here with two others, Enakshi Mukherjee and Shantanu Bhattacharya of the same department on the same defalcation issue. During investigation, it was identified that Rs 24 lakh of pension money was unlawfully transferred to Enakshi’s bank account.
The SAIL’s special audit team recently detected anomalies with disbursement of pensions for the DSP employees, between 2020-21 and 2023-23 financial years and a sum of Rs 3.33 cr was identified as excess payment to the superannuated employees. After a primary investigation, a complaint was registered with the Durgapur PS and the police, within days, had arrested Pinaki with other two. A detailed investigation to ascertain the root of the offence is in progress, said deputy commissioner of police, Durgapur, Abhishek Gupta. He said that Shantanu’s arrest had helped foil the network of unlawful fund transfer.