A multi-crore scam that's been quietly chugging along

In an unprecedented move, the Mumbai Railway Accident Claims Tribunal (RCT) has asked the Central Railway (CR) and Western Railway (WR) to file FIRs on fraudulent railway accident compensation claims.

The RCT found that compensation awarded to railway accident claimants run into crores — CR paid Rs70.2 crore in two years — and that 25 per cent of compensation cheques are returned because the claimants’ addresses turn out to be fake. Since January 2011, 1,905 of the 7,346 cheques issued by CR were returned unclaimed because of incorrect addresses. 

In one case, an RCT team led by its member (technical) S Ananthanarayan notified the anti-corruption bureau that 30-odd cases filed with it had the same address for all the victims in the Adarsh Nagar locality of Jalgaon. Also, all claimants had accounts in two cooperative banks in Jalgaon’s Ganesh Colony area.

On August 23, the RCT wrote to the WR’s chief claims office, asking it to file an FIR in connection with an accident compensation case filed at the Lucknow RCT as well as the Mumbai RCT, which was in contravention of the rules. The man who filed the case in Lucknow, however, said he did not file for the claim in Mumbai.

Atul Rane, chief spokesman, CR, said it was the first time that CR had filed five FIRs in two months against such fraudulent claims. “We are filing cases under section 148 (making false statement in a compensation application punishable with a three-year jail term or a fine) of the Indian Railway Act. This was done on the recommendation of the Mumbai RCT,” he said.