Vadodara: The fraudsters operating a fake government office not only fabricated project proposals amounting to lakhs of rupees but also put some of them into action. Police investigators looking into the scheme revealed that this duo deceived various government departments and instructed them to carry out tasks related to irrigation.

According to a government executive engineer, the two individuals executed approximately 95 projects, primarily related to water tanks and other irrigation purposes.

“We have requested comprehensive information about the proposals presented by the accused. It is possible that they were involved in executing some of the projects which got approved through the district administration. They issued orders to relevant department officials who believed they were following legitimate government directives. We are still interrogating them to extract more details,” said Imtiyaz Sheikh, Superintendent of Police (SP) for Chhota Udepur.

The culprits, Sandip Rajput and Abu Bakr Saiyed, actively worked on several projects, including on-site supervision and field visits. The police have frozen the bank account used for diverting government funds, and investigations are ongoing to trace the destinations where the money was channeled. When questioned about the involvement of government employees in the scheme, Sheikh stated, “There is a possibility. We are questioning the suspects regarding the source of the funds and the recipients.”

Rajput and Saiyed had been operating a fake office of the executive engineer in the irrigation project division in Bodeli for the past two years. They consistently submitted development proposals under various programs. They sent these proposals to the office of the project administrator (tribal sub-plan) for Chhota Udepur district from July 2021, fraudulently obtaining over Rs 4.15 crore. These proposals were approved and payments were disbursed. The scam came to light when the current project administrator, Sachin Kumar, recently requested details from the executive engineer of irrigation projects of Division-2 Bodeli regarding proposals worth Rs 3.74 crore. DeshGujarat