8 BMC zonal officers among 17 booked for death funds fraud

Bhopal: The Lokayukta’s special police establishment (SPE) has booked 17 people, including eight zonal officers of Bhopal Municipal Corporation (BMC), for allegedly declaring living employees dead and claiming death assistance funds. The scam is estimated to be around Rs 2 crore.
The investigation began on a complaint filed by Md Qamar of Ashoka Garden on Feb 19 this year.Qamar alleged that in Aug 2023, BMC transferred Rs 2 lakh as death assistance to the account of Syed Mustafa Ali, who was very much alive. Lokayukta’s probe revealed 123 similar cases. Interestingly, records for 95 of these cases were missing from BMC headquarters, zonal offices, and ward offices.

This scam appears to be an extension of a similar one unearthed in BMC's planning cell in 2023. Following a woman's complaint, the then additional commissioner had initiated an investigation, which found fraudulent approvals for death assistance using the IDs of zonal officers from zones 3, 9, 11, 16, 19, and 20. Zone 16 had the highest number of suspicious cases (90), with 65 uploaded simultaneously at 11pm.
As a result of the 2023 investigation, all seven computer operators in the planning cell were removed, and notices were issued to the six zonal officers concerned. BMC offers death assistance of Rs 2 lakh for natural deaths and Rs 4 lakh for accidental deaths, plus Rs 5,000 =for funeral expenses.
The Lokayukta probe revealed that zonal officers had logged online and made payments to beneficiaries outside their allotted zones. Payments were processed without verifying the beneficiary’s application and related documents, including death certificates, beneficiary proof, address proof, and bank records, which were not submitted by the ward in-charge.
Prescribed rules for payment were not followed, with payments being made by manipulating numerous documents and payments were issued to faulty or incorrect bank accounts. Also, no information was gathered from the concerned office for the payments, nor was any investigation conducted before processing them.