₹300 crore Bhagalpur scam puts Nitish Kumar on the back foot

With the Bihar Chief Secretary admitting that as much as ₹302 croreof public money were siphoned off from the accounts of Bhagalpur district administration to the accounts of an NGO, RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav has been quick to demand a CBI inquiry into the scam. Patna edition of Hindustan reported on Friday that the amount detected so far had gone up to ₹383 crore.

Claiming that the amount would snowball far beyond the amount admitted by the Bihar Government, the RJD chief alleged that the sum was spirited away during the tenure of Nitish Kumar as chief minister and Sushil Kumar Modi as the deputy chief minister and with their connivance and knowledge.

While there is little clarity yet about the scam, details that have surfaced so far suggest that although SrijanMahilaVikasSahayog Samiti set up a cooperative bank for women, it illegally began accepting deposits worth several crores, parking black money owned by bureaucrats and businessmen and also lent huge personal loans to people besides lending for purchase of land and real estate projects.

The founder of the NGO is dead and her son and daughter-in-law, Amit Kumar and Priya Sinha, are said to be absconding.

Forged cheques were alleged to have been used to siphon off money from Indian Bank and Bank of Baroda, in which the Bhagalpur District Magistrate had accounts for land acquisition and urban development schemes. But the money found their way into the accounts of the NGO and thereafter to local businessmen and politically influential people.

The founder of the NGO, Manorama Sinha, is said to have died earlier this year. Widowed even before she registered the NGO in 1996, old timers in Bhagalpur and a local news portal news5pm.in claim that she was close to influential bureaucrats, politicians and even judicial officers.

Officially the NGO claims to have launched the cooperative bank with a paltry 10 thousand Rupees and 100 account holders. It now claims to have a deposit of ₹8 crore and 5,000 account holders. But while Reserve Bank of India rules do not permit cooperative banks to accept deposits of more than ₹50,000, in 2013 the Economic Offences Unit of the state government had initiated an inquiry after a complaint revealed that the bank had received a single cheque for ₹7.32 crore from an ADM rank officer Jayashree Thakur. Nobody seems to know the fate of the inquiry initiated four years ago.

Sanjit Kumar, a local whistleblower, reported news5pm.in, had in 2013 complained to the Ministry of Finance, Reserve Bank of India and the district administration, demanding an inquiry into the affairs of the NGO.

But despite information about the suspicious financial transactions available four years ago, neither Bhagalpur district administration nor the state government was apparently able to stop the scam.

While the chief minister has announced the formation of a Special Investigating Team (SIT) to inquire into the scam, RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav has not lost the opportunity to accuse Nitish Kumar and his deputy Sushil Kumar Modi of being the masterminds. Accusing them of posting their favourite and trusted officers to Bhagalpur all these years, Lalu Yadav said he would be complaining to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and ask the central agency to take over the inquiry.

“Nitish Kumar, pahle tum apnalalachchhoro, fir mujhelalachchhornekiseekhdena,” (First overcome your own greed before giving me a sermon on it), The Telegraphquoted him as saying.