Mysore/Mysuru: Lakshmipuram Police, who are investigating the fake bank challan and seal scam in Mysuru Urban Development Authority (MUDA), have arrested two MUDA employees and a Bank of Baroda, MUDA branch staff in connection with the case, recovering Rs. 4.5 lakh from them. Subsequently, a city Court granted them conditional bail.

The arrested individuals are T.S. Nandan, a Group D employee of MUDA, B. Tarun Kumar, an outsourced Data Entry Operator, and Sunil Kumar, an outsourced Data Entry Operator at Bank of Baroda, MUDA branch.

On discovery of the scam, a MUDA official had filed a complaint with Lakshmipuram Police. Curiously, the complaint did not name the three accused but instead implicated five applicants who had sought records from MUDA, accusing them of submitting fake Bank challans and seal to obtain the records. The Police, based on the complaint, included the names of the five applicants in the FIR.

However, during the course of investigation, it was revealed that the five applicants were innocent and the three employees were the actual culprits. Consequently, the Police arrested two MUDA employees and a bank employee on charges of fraud. The arrested individuals were produced before a city Court, which granted them conditional bail.

The five applicants — Mohan Kumar of M.L. Hundi in T. Narasipur Taluk, Ananda Reddy of Shyadanahalli, Yogesh of Hebbal, U.R. Girish of Nazarbad, and Venugopal of Bengaluru — had submitted bank challans with seals while applying for Khata transfer.

However, the challans and the seals were found to be fake, prompting MUDA authorities to file a complaint with Lakshmipuram Police.

During investigation, the Police discovered that the challans were indeed fake and the three accused had been embezzling money intended for crediting to MUDA’s Bank account.

 The arrested MUDA employees collected money and challans from applicants at MUDA’s Spandana Counter, promising them expedited record retrieval. Meanwhile, the bank employee surreptitiously stamped the bank seal on the produced challans when the bank staff were occupied with other tasks. This fraudulent activity had persisted for the past one and a half years, resulting in significant revenue loss for MUDA.

Sources indicate that in the wake of this revelation, MUDA officials are contemplating the formation of a special team to scrutinise all bank challans submitted to MUDA in the past 18 months, aiming to assess the actual extent of revenue loss.