Rev P S P Raju, has been summoned by the Income Tax department over allegations that a church NGO headed by him allegedly embezzled funds meant for Tsunami rehabilitation.
KOLKATA: The Church of North India's Bishop of Kolkata, Rev P S P Raju, has been summoned by the Income Tax department over allegations that a church NGO headed by him allegedly embezzled funds meant for Tsunami rehabilitation and relief in the Andamans.
The summons was served on May 26, but the Bishop has appealed for an adjournment which is yet to be disposed, Income Tax sources said, adding a fresh summons would be issued after disposal of the appeal.
According to the sources, the department opened a suo motu investigation in September last year following press reports that the Calcutta Urban Services (CUS), an NGO of which Bishop Raju is the chairman, had allegedly paid huge amounts to fictitious traders for buying relief material.
It was reported that CUS also committed irregularities in paying contractors for the buildings constructed for rehabilitation of tsunami victims.
The matter came to light when London-based donor agency Methodist Relief and Development Fund (MRDF), which gave 3,73,532 pounds to CUS to carry out relief and rehabilitation work in South Andaman and Little Andaman, conducted a field visit in April 2007 to ascertain the progress of work.
MRDF programme officer Menka Jha, who undertook the field visit, in her report said that scrutiny of bills and vouchers by CUS as evidence of its "extensive work" revealed that all bills for foodgrains were "unauthentic".
"The challans were fake, the muster rolls carried fake beneficiary signatures and the packing and dispatching documents were carefully engineered," Jha observed.
The MRDF report claimed that while CUS produced bills from shops supposedly operating in the Barabazar and Netaji Subhas Road areas of the metropolis and bills showing bulk purchases from Burdwan district, physical verification determined that none of the shops existed.
"Bills had been printed randomly at various offset printing shops. These fake bills together notched up a figure of more than Rs 1.8 million," the report said.
It said that halfway through its project, CUS reported a doubling of construction costs of buildings meant for tsunami victims, pegging the cost of each building at 2,856 pounds.
"Having a look at the phase-I and phase-II of the houses, I am forced to admit that by no stretch of imagination would I price the phase-II houses of 200 sq ft each at 2,856 pounds (Rs 2.30 lakh). My doubt was further strengthened when a comparison with other agencies' costs also revealed the same.
I was told by one of the contractors that he was paid Rs 1.60 lakh for a fully completed house," Jha said in her report.
She alleged that six supposedly "untouched" houses at Wandoor and another at Sippighat had been registered in the names of CUS staff instead of the victims for whom they were meant.
"These houses would have been subsequently transferred into CUS ownership. In fact, the Finance Officer in charge of recording project expenditure in a transparent manner ensured that staff members signed the deed papers without qualms."
She also alleged that the state of records at CUS' Port Blair office was disorganised.
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