Mumbai: Nair hospital clerk defrauds BMC of Rs 10 lakh, thanks to masks

Medical staff inoculate civil authority workers with a Covid-19 coronavirus vaccine at the Nair Hospital’s vaccination centre in Mumbai. Pic/AFP

Taking advantage of the mandatory use of masks during the pandemic, a clerk at Nair hospital defrauded the BMC of Rs 9.91 lakh last year. However, the civic body's audit department unearthed the fraud in time and the hospital authorities confronted Prasad Gosavi, who confessed and even returned the entire amount.

The Agripada police booked Gosavi, 32, on Monday evening on charges of cheating and forgery, but are yet to arrest him. According to police, Gosavi managed to process family pension and gratuity claims of two deceased employees using forged papers and with the help of imposters, who posed as staffers' relatives.

Fraud in 2020

Nair hospital's establishment department lodged a complaint at Agripada police station on February 22 stating that the fraud was done between July 2020 and September 2020.

On August 8, 2020, Gosavi accompanied a woman claiming to be the daughter-in-law of Kanku Rawalia, who worked at Nair hospital. The hospital sanctioned a claim of R10.06 lakh, which was for the past 12 years. Gosavi received the amount minus taxes. However, during the audit, civic officials noticed that the family pension was stopped after Rawalia's family member, the claimant, stopped reporting for verification in 2009, and the claim after several years looked suspicious.

The audit department noticed forgery in the claim of another deceased employee, Nirmala Maghade. The proposal, sanctioned in July 2020, resulted in the BMC depositing R1 lakh in the given account. A third claim of post-retirement pension was filed for Shantabai Jadhav, but the hospital didn't sanction it on learning that she was dead.

Internal enquiry

After being informed by the BMC's audit department, Nair hospital conducted an internal enquiry of all the claims processed by Gosavi.

"The clerk forged the document to get a family pension given by the BMC to the relatives of the deceased employees. In one case, he claimed pension against the name of a deceased worker. This was possible as he had brought the claimants in masks. Due to COVID-19, the hospital administration is also following the physical distance rule, which means no face verification," said a police officer.

"We have registered an FIR under IPC Sections 419 (cheating by impersonation), 420 (cheating), 465 (forgery), 468 (forgery for the purpose of cheating), 470 (forgery of document or electronic record), 471 (using as genuine a forged document)," said Shriram Koregaonkar, senior inspector of Agripada police station.