Uttar Pradesh: CBI books five postal department officials for embezzlement

LUCKNOW: Central Bureau of Investigations (CBI) on Saturday booked five postal department officials for siphoning of Rs 6 crore from post office deposits over a period of four years.

The five accused —

Sunil Yadav

,

Vinay Yadav

, Pradeep Singh, Rajesh Kumar and

Ramashankar Lal

— had served in different post offices in Varanasi and have been charged with criminal breach of trust, dishonesty and cheating.

CBI said, cash was fraudulently withdrawn from post office accounts of 295 citizens between 2016 and 2019 when scamsters Sunil and Vinay were postal assistants, the duo of Rajesh and Ramashankar were assistant post masters and Pradeep was a savings agent.

Initially, the case was being investigated by Varanasi district police and an FIR was registered at Cantonment police station on September 5, 2019. But even after one-and-half years of probe, police failed to crack the case. Thereafter, the UP government referred the case to CBI on September 23, 2021.

Money was embezzled from savings account, time deposit account, recurring deposit account, monthly income deposit account and public provident fund accounts of 295 account holders, said an official with the Lucknow unit of CBI.

Account holders, who first blew the whistle, said, Rs 50,000-Rs 65,000 was debited even though they made no transactions. A source in CBI said, a list of complaints has been received by the team and statements of each account holder will be recorded.