Housing cooperative society scam: One held

Thiruvananthapuram: The cantonment police on Sunday recorded the arrest of Raveendran Nair, 45, of Parattavila near Malayinkeezh on charges of the alleged financial scam reported in Congress-affiliated Secretariat Employees Housing Cooperative Society.
Raveendran had been evading arrest for over a month and the police took him into custody from Malayinkeezh on Saturday evening.He was charged with relevant sections of cheating, criminal breach of trust and forgery.
The Cantonment police had registered a case nearly a month ago after a cash misappropriation of around Rs 1.5 crore was detected in the society. On further scrutiny of documents, it was found that Raveendran Nair, a section officer in the general administration department and also the secretary of the society, was responsible for the siphoning of cash. The fraud was revealed when Raveendran had to go on leave following illness and another officer took his charge. After the police registered a case based on the complaint filed by the employees of secretariat, Raveendran went absconding.
The case pertained to siphoning of cash in the name of sanctioning loans to members of the society. Documents were forged to create fake identities to sanction loans. As many as 16 loans were sanctioned in this manner.
The cooperative department also launched an inquiry and found that the complaints of the employees held merit. Thus, an assistant registrar of cooperative department took over the charge of administration of the society, after dissolving the existing administrative body.
But, seven days later, the president of the society, Dileep Khan, who is also an additional secretary in the general administration department, approached the state high court against the cooperative department’s move and managed to secure a stay order. The department is planning to counter this case legally before the court.
M S Bijukuttan, the general secretary of Kerala Secretariat Employees Association (CPM affiliated), said that though the arrest of Raveendran was a welcome move, secretariat employees believed that more people were involved in the scam.
“We don’t believe that one person alone can plan and execute such a huge fraud. The evidence found by cooperative department in their inquiry too suggested this. We hope the police would not restrict the probe to Raveendran alone and bring out all the persons involved,’’ Bijukuttan said.