New Delhi: A court here has suggested to the Delhi Chief Secretary to conduct an audit to find out whether public money is being siphoned off in the name of divorce pension through dubious bank accounts.
Chief Metropolitan Magistrate S K Sethi also asked the Deputy Commissioner of Police of Dwarka in south west Delhi to personally look into a case which appeared to the court as “part of a larger scam for misappropriation of public money being systematically done” by way of withdrawal of divorce pension through dubious accounts.
Divorce pension is a scheme under the Department of Women and Child Development of the Delhi government to provide social security in the form of financial assistance to widows, divorced, separated, abandoned, deserted or destitute women above 18 years who have no adequate means of subsistence and are poor, needy and vulnerable.
“The present matter appears to be a part of a larger scam for misappropriation of public money being systematically done by way of withdrawal of divorce pension through dubious accounts and the complainant could be just one of the several victims whose names may have been used for such withdrawals,” the court said.
It said that a copy of this order be sent to the office of the chief secretary of the Delhi government so that an audit can also be conducted at their end to find out how public money is being siphoned off in the name of divorce pension.
The court has asked the DCP to monitor the investigation and file a status report by February 1.
It said that the matter needs to be looked into by the higher authorities to uncover the entire nexus behind such dubious schemes.
The court also asked the chief manager of the Axis Bank, in which the fake account was being operated, to get an internal inquiry conducted to find the possible involvement of bank officials.
Advocate Rakesh Kumar Garg, the counsel for complainant Sonika Aggarwal, has submitted that someone had opened an account in Axis Bank in her name and was drawing divorce pension from the Delhi government since last many years.
PTI