Racket to siphon off mid-day meal grains busted, 5 nabbed

Rajkot: Rajkot police on Monday busted a racket of siphoning off food grains meant for school children under the mid-day meal programme and selling the stock in the open market.

Cops arrested five persons near Limbda Chowk in Rajkot and seized 2,000kg rice and 600kg wheat from them.

In Rajkot city, food is supplied under the mid-day meal programme to about 15,000 children from the 334 government primary schools and anganwadis everyday. Those arrested were identified as Rahul Dholakia, Nizamuddin Ali Hussain, Lala Khan Rahmatulla Khan, Kanavibha Bharvad and Arjun Singh Sikh. Two Delhi-based traders Ankur Jain and Niranjan Jain of Sree Shakti Traders were also booked along with the five accused for criminal breach of trust, cheating and criminal conspiracy.

Investigating officer sub-inspector P B Kavana of Pradhuman Nagar police station said that the accused used to divert about 25% of the foodgrains supplied by the central government for the mid-day meal programme into the open market every month. He added that the arrested accused Arjun Singh acted as a coordinator on behalf of Sree Shakti Traders while siphoning off foodgrains to local traders like Dholakia. Sree Shakti Traders were given contract to supply foodgrains to schools and anganwadis.

Late night on Sunday, a police team intercepted a truck and a tempo filled with foodgrains near Suchak School, where the central kitchen has been set up for supply of cooked food to children across the city.

Police said that Dholakia and Bharvad were driving the two vehicles, while Hussain and Rahmatulla Khan were labourers seated in them. When they could not produce documents for the foodgrains, they were taken into custody and questioned. Dholakia told police that he had bought the foodgrains meant for mid-say meal from Arjun Singh and late night on Sunday, he was arrested from his house in the city.

Kavana told TOI, “The accused have been operating this racket since long. The Sree Shakti Traders was blacklisted last month by the Rajkot Municipal Corporation (RMC) for supplying substandard foodgrains. However, they were allowed to continue the supply till another agency was given the contract.”