NEW DELHI: The Central Bureau of Investigation has filed a cheating, corruption and criminal conspiracy case against five officers of Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) including an under-secretary Sanjay Mehta for allegedly conniving with private companies in siphoning off government funds disbursed under a scheme called "Training for All".After registering an FIR, the agency teams on Tuesday carried out searches at 11 places in Delhi NCR including premises of accused government officials and private companies.Interestingly, DoPT is the administrative department of CBI in the government of India.Other than Mehta, CBI has named in its FIR - section officers Hemant and Vijay Pal; and assistant section officers R K Arora and Mahendra Singh - all belonging to training division of DoPT, and private person/vendors- Ashok; Kavita Ahluwalia; Institute of Public Sciences, Institute of Public Administration, Kapil Book Store and Sahej Trading Corporation.CBI says they are involved in alleged irregularities of over Rs 18 crore in the department.The action has been taken on a complaint from V K Sinha Director (Training), DoPT which has alleged that in its internal inquiry, it was found that out of total 67 payments during 2017-18 amounting over Rs 9.21 crore, eight bills of Rs 18.17 lakh were issued fraudulently in favour of the five vendors. "It is also mentioned in the enquiry report of DoPT that during the course of random checking of sanction orders pertaining to the financial year 2016-17, three sanction orders issued by training section were found to be issued fraudulently without the approval of the competent authority,", the CBI said.The DoPT said its preliminary enquiry indicates prima facie involvement of training department officials who have been subsequently named in the CBI FIR. Mehta was placed under suspension after irregularities were found in payments.

Source: Times of India November 28, 2017 15:22 UTC