Ahmedabad: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) Ahmedabad Zonal Office announced on Sunday that it had conducted search operations on 29/11/2024 in multiple cases related to misappropriation of govt. funds in post offices in Gujarat. The searches were conducted at 19 locations located in Gujarat under the provisions of Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002. The action was in consequence of these cases being investigated by ED on the basis of several FIRs registered by ACB, CBI.

In one of the case,the accused Sub Postmasters in conspiracy with accused private persons fraudulently reopened earlier closed Recurring Deposits (RD) accounts and then fraudulently closed the same and, thereby, misappropriated the government money [Total 606 Recurring Deposits accounts amounting to Rs. 18.60 Crore].

In another case, the accused, while working as Sub Post Master at Mengni Sub Post Office, Gondal Division, Rajkot, Gujarat in Criminal conspiracy with others had committed misappropriation of government money amounting Rs. 9.97 Crore during the period of 16.10.2019 to 21.11.2022. The accused public servant adopted modus operandi of manually uploading fake payments through utility tool – SAP (Departmental Software) in Daily Transaction Report of Mengni Sub Office in the head of old KVP Principal amount and old KVP Interest.

In another case, Recurring Deposit (RD) accounts of Ravalwadi post office, once closed were again closed twice or thrice with higher denomination and in different name of depositors, by creating closure documents fraudulently. Instead of depositing the accepted amount, fraudster diverted the closure amount of fraudulent RD accounts to new account under various schemes by mentioning reinvestment on forged RD closure form. Another technique of cheating customers was that the fraudster used to accept deposits from their customer for opening of new accounts, issued passbook to them by reusing old passbook/ new fake passbook but in fact they didn’t open any account in their names in Sanchay post/ FINACLE.

Further in another case, the accused [the then Sub Postmaster, Surajkuji Sub Post Office, Jamnagar Division, Jamnagar] knowingly used forged documents as genuine, for the purpose of pecuniary advantage and thereby, misappropriated the Government Money and causing wrongful loss to the Post Offices to the tune of Rs.2.94 Crore.

In other case, the accused persons [Savings Bank Postal Assistant Chotila Sub Post Office, LSG Postal Assistant Surendranagar Head Post Office and Sub Post Master, Chotila]have entered into criminal conspiracy and they misappropriated the funds from various type of postal deposit accounts causing wrongful loss to the Post Offices to the tune of Rs.1.57 Crore.

As a result of searches conducted amount to the tune of Rs. 1 Crore (approx.) were seized. Further, details of various immovable properties exceeding Rs. 1.5 Crore have been recovered. Further investigation is under progress. DeshGujarat