BHOPAL: A 26-year old former clerk, who allegedly faked 279 unnatural deaths and siphoned off Rs 10.8 crore of government compensation in Seoni district during the Covid lockdown, had lost a whopping Rs 4 crore of the ill-gotten money in online gaming, say police.
Nine of the accused, including ex-clerk Sachin Dahayat, are in custody, but 28 suspects are yet to be caught. Sachin, the mastermind, was arrested in December, Keolari police in charge Kishore Wamankar told TOI.
“The accused claims to have lost more than Rs 4 crore in online gambling, which he started playing at a young age. This put him in debt and led him to carry out the first case of fraud. When he succeeded, he continued with it,” Wamankar said.
Police have made seizures worth around Rs 1.75 crore, including a plot, in the case, the officer said.
The clerk was posted in the accounts section of the Keolari tehsil office. According to police, he exploited a government scheme that pays a compensation of Rs 4 lakh to the kin of poor and landless people who die an unnatural death — due to a lightning strike, snake bite, drowning or other such reasons.
When Covid-19 lockdown was imposed in the country for the first time, Dahayat — burdened by online gaming debt — hit upon this ‘unnatural death relief scam’, say police.
The first such transaction he made was on March 27, 2020, police said, adding that the compensation for the death of an imaginary person was dispersed across 40 bank accounts used by the clerk. By November last year, when the scam was busted, he had managed to carry out 279 such transactions, say the cops.
The procedure in such cases is that field revenue staff prepare a report in case of an unnatural death, which is then verified by officials to see if he/she is eligible for compensation. If everything checks out, an order is passed for the payout, and a copy of it is uploaded on the government portal along with details of kin and their account number. The money is then transferred to the account.
Dahayat simply created fake orders in the name of imaginary persons, say police. No file was put up, nor any case made officially. Dahayat would fill in fake details and provide the account number of one of his own people, where the money was then transferred. He used to give a commission of around 10% to the people whose accounts he used for the scam, said Wamankar.
Dahayat realized he couldn’t keep up the charade and fled before an audit team arrived. He was tracked down and nabbed in a few days.