Military canteens in Ahmedabad 'diverting' store items, CBI registers case

Neeraj Chauhan

New Delhi: The Central Bureau of Investigation has registered a case to probe alleged diversion of store items from the military run CSD canteens in

Gujarat

’s Ahmedabad in connivance with the canteen officials and private persons. The agency teams were carrying raids at five places in Ahmedabad at the premises of suspects involved in the alleged irregularities.

It is alleged that the items sold exclusively in CSD canteens and meant for military personnel were being diverted in the civil market.

The anti-corruption agency had received a complaint from ministry of defence in this regard.

CBI sources said that there are allegations of nexus between

Canteen Stores Department

(CSD) Area Depot in Ahmedabad, Unit Run Canteen (

URC

) and third party (civilians) to divert large amounts of quantity of CSD Store in civil market.

“It was also alleged that during January 2015 to June 2015, one of the Unit Run Canteen (URC) repeatedly submitted indents for certain category of goods every month and collected supplies which was abnormal. During cross checking of the payment details, it was revealed that there was large number of payments allegedly received from third party against indents of a particular URC. It also appeared that the stores were shown to have been collected by authorized representative of URC on each occasion,” said a CBI officer.

It was further alleged that payments to the tune of Rs 1.83 crores was received by way of such third party payments in 6 months period. Apart from this, there were few other suspected transactions and total amount of the suspected fraudulent payments were found to the tune of 2.12 crores, said sources.