The Food Corporation of India headquarters in New Delhi. File
| Photo Credit: PTI
The Central Bureau of Investigation has conducted searches at 39 more locations in connection with the allegation of massive corruption in the Food Corporation of India (FCI) in connivance with private rice millers and grain suppliers.
During the fresh round of searches in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Chennai and Karnataka, the agency has seized ₹1.03 crore in cash and arrested an FCI manager, Satish Verma, who was posted in Chandigarh. Fixed-deposit receipts for over ₹3 crore were also found.
On Wednesday, as part of the operation codenamed ‘Kanak’, it searched 60 premises and arrested a deputy general manager named Rajiv Kumar Mishra.
The CBI has registered a case against 34 serving FCI officials and three retired members, 17 private persons, including rice mill owners and grain suppliers. Among the accused is FCI executive director (headquarters) Sudeep Singh, from whose residence the agency has allegedly seized ₹10 lakh in cash.
As alleged, the rice millers and grain merchants were paying bribes to the FCI officials to overlook substandard supplies and inflated quantities of the consignments. The officials, in conspiracy with the rice millers, allegedly covered up the shortages in stocks. Bribes running into crores were paid over a period of time.
According to the First Information Report (FIR), a source informed the agency that Mr. Verma and assistant general manager Sukanta Kumar Jena had directed a technical assistant, Nishant Barria, to collect bribes from private millers for the trucks being unloaded in the depots in the Chandigarh division.
The lower level officials were asked to collect ₹1,050 per truck as “central pool”, from which ₹200 was for the general manager, ₹50 each for the four deputy general managers, ₹20 for the regional office laboratories, ₹100 for executive director/headquarter officials, ₹450 was to be kept by Jena himself and the rest was to be kept for miscellaneous work.
The accused technical assistants, in connivance with each other, were collecting ₹4,000 per truck from millers, from which ₹1,050 was for the “central pool”, ₹100 for the depot clerk, ₹1,000 for the manager (quality control), ₹200 for local expenses and the remaining for the technical assistant concerned.
The FIR alleged that on October 24, 2022, Mr. Singh received ₹10 lakh from mill owners Ravinder Singh Khera, Mehar Singh and Bittu Khullar to avoid getting their firms blacklisted for low-standard rice. On August 5 last year, Mr. Mehar Singh allegedly transferred ₹5 lakh to the account of the executive director’s wife Amritpreet Kaur, who is also an accused in the case.