Daijiworld Media Network – Mumbai
Mumbai, Nov 10: A senior clerk of the Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC), who had been absconding for nearly a year after allegedly siphoning off Rs 21.8 lac from the corporation’s income tax payment account, has finally been arrested by the Nagpada police from Sion area last week.
The accused, identified as Prathmesh Pawar (33), a resident of Khadakpada in Kalyan, was produced before the local court, which remanded him to police custody.
According to police, the fraud came to light in June last year when Pawar suddenly stopped attending work, citing illness. During his absence, his junior staff attempted to access the official income tax payment account managed by him and sought his user ID and password. When Pawar remained unreachable, the department contacted the bank to change login credentials. It was then they discovered that Pawar had allegedly transferred Rs 21.8 lakh from MSRTC’s account into his personal bank accounts through multiple small transactions to avoid detection.
Officials immediately lodged an FIR with Nagpada Police under sections of the IPC for forgery, criminal breach of trust, and relevant provisions of the Information Technology Act, 2000.
Investigations revealed that Pawar, posted in the Salary Employment Miscellaneous Department, was entrusted with managing income tax transactions via MSRTC’s SBI e-payment account. Between April 12 and June 18, 2024, he allegedly misused his official credentials to divert funds into his personal SBI account.
Following the incident, Pawar went missing, prompting his family to file a missing person complaint at Khadakpada Police Station in Kalyan.
“Despite months of search and technical tracing that indicated his location in Bhubaneswar, Odisha, the accused kept changing locations to evade arrest. Based on a recent tip-off, he was finally traced and nabbed from Sion,” a police official said.
Authorities are now working to recover the embezzled amount and probe its end use. Preliminary findings suggest that Pawar may have diverted the misappropriated funds into stock trading activities.