Ahmedabad: St Xavier’s Loyola duped of Rs 3 crore

AHMEDABAD: The accountant of a

Jesuit school

in

Naranpura

has been accused of siphoning off Rs 3.21 crore from the institute’s funds. The accused, who has been working in the

school

for 21 years, allegedly committed the

crime

between 2019 and 2020.

A complaint in this regard was filed with Gujarat University police by Fr Xavier Amalraj, principal of

St Xavier’s Loyola School

on Sunday.

He told

police

that Manisha Vasava, a resident of Sterling City in Bopal, had transferred Rs 2.84 crore from the school’s funds and Rs 33.65 lakh in

school fee

to the account of her accomplice Jayesh Vasvani, a resident of Sardarnagar.

“We have to conduct an audit of our accounts every year. When I asked Vasava to submit the records to the auditors, she began avoiding me and suddenly stopped coming to school. This raised my suspicion. Meanwhile, the auditors also found serious anomalies in the accounts,” Fr Amalraj stated in the

FIR

.

School authorities checked details of the

bank accounts

and found that money had been transferred RTGS (real-time gross settlement) and cheque into Vasvani’s account. On further inquiry, they found that former principal Fr Charles Aruldas had signed the cheque. However, Fr Aruldas denied having signed such a cheque. It was later established that Vasava had forged his signature to divert the funds illegally.

In the FIR, Amalraj stated that Vasava had hatched a conspiracy to cheat the school out of Rs 3.21 crore. Gujarat University police have registered a complaint of cheating, forgery and criminal conspiracy against her and Vasvani.