Chhattisgarh: Female Doctor, 3 Clerks Held for Snakebite Scam in Bilaspur
Police allege 431 normal deaths were falsely shown as snakebite cases to claim compensation.
Raipur: A female doctor and three government clerks in Chhattisgarh’s Bilaspur district have been arrested for their alleged involvement in the snakebite compensation scam amounting to around Rs 17 crore, police said on Monday.
While Dr. Priyanka Soni, who was earlier posted in the Chhattisgarh Institute of Medical Sciences (CIMS), Bilaspur, was arrested on Saturday, three clerks in the local tehsil office, Narendra Kaushik, Garib Ram Binjhwar and Harishankar Rathore, were arrested on Sunday, according to the Bilaspur police.
The issue has rocked the Chhattisgarh Assembly recently, leading the Bilaspur police to bust the alleged snakebite compensation scam.
Bilaspur district senior superintendent of police (SSP) Rajneesh Singh is personally supervising the probe into the alleged scandal, sources said.
Preliminary police probe suggested that 431 deaths in the district have been falsely cited as death due to snakebite to claim compensation to the tune of Rs 17.24 crore.
A cartel of medical staff and revenue officials is involved in the alleged scam in which false postmortem reports were created to show the normal deaths as deaths due to snakebite to claim compensation.
The state government provides a compensation of Rs four lakh in each snakebite death case.
As many as 14 FIRs have so far been filed in connection with the alleged scam, the Bilaspur police said.
The police suspected that the scandal may be of a bigger scale as more such cases are coming to the fore.
