With the State Government stressing on cleansing the State of corruption, a senior Government official was arrested on the charge of embezzlement of the Government funds on Sunday night. It is learnt that Dehradun police arrested Doiwala additional development officer (ADO) Tapendra Rana, resident of Vivekanand Vihar, Jogiwala, tagging him to the charge of misappropriation of funds meant for the Centre-sponsored scheme Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and others. Police further informed that while being grilled, the officer had admitted his involvement in corrupt practices.
Things started on May 5, 2016 when a complaint had been received from Gautam Prakash Sharma, resident of Galjwadi. Subsequently, a case (54/16) under sections-420/409/467/468/471/120b of IPC had been registered in Cantt police station. The complainant had accused Rana who was then the village panchayat development officer in league with the gram pradhan, Galjwadi leela Sharma of misappropriating the government funds through making false vouchers on village development works. A team led by Cantt police station in-charge Shankar Singh comprising several sub-inspectors and constables was formed to investigate the case. In course of investigation, the team had secured relevant evidences that supported the embezzlement charges leveled against the officer and others.
Police said that the evidences recovered confirmed the involvement of leela Sharma and Rana in spiriting away funds meant for erecting fences under MNREGS through producing false vouchers.
Investigation had further revealed that the accused had used vouchers of a firm in 2009 while the same firm was registered in 2012. The probing team had found that the official documents were fudged to conceal the corrupt practice. Subsequently, Section 201 of IPC had been added in the existing FIR to include the charge of document tampering against the accused. Moreover, the village development department had ordered recovery of Rs 10.47 lakhs from the gram pradham, the village development officer and a junior engineer regarding the alleged misappropriation of funds. Special auditing of the works under probe was ordered too.