Vigilance Bureau lodges FIR against 16 including bureaucrat Raju

Speed Post News Network

Patna : State Vigilance Investigation Bureau has registered an FIR against 16 persons including senior IAS officer S M Raju in connection with alleged irregularities in distribution of scholarshipl to SC/ST students.

Raju has been charged with committing irregularities in distribution of scholarship among 25 SC/ST students of a Technical Institute of Vishakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, during 2013-14 as the then Secretary, Welfare department. Scholarship was allegedly released even in the names 15 students who had left the institute and five others who had completed their study there. The FIR was registered with vigilance police station in the last week of November 2016, according sources in Vigilance Investigation Bureau. The accused include some officials posted at the state headquarters of the department. Raju, who  hails from Karnataka, is a 1991 batch IAS officer and is at present holding the post of Additional Member, Board of Revenue.

According to the FIR, scholarships were disbursed to the some engineering colleges in Odisha and Andhra Pradesh where me students were not even enrolled. Some fictitous colleges too got scholarships for Bihar students.  Every SC/ST student from Bihar studying for higher studies gets post-matriculation scholarships of Rs 50,000 to Rs one lakh every year. Scholarshops were given to the 274 private engineering colleges in 2013-14.Vigilance bureau cheif  Ravinder Kumar said the amount disbursed runs into hundreds of crores.

Raju is known among the bureaucrats of Bihar for inventing a herbal medicine which cures cancer and had issued full page advertisements in premier national dailies including financial papers this year advertising his invention and a opening of a herbal farm in Bangalore.