BENGALURU: When the rampant use of bogus ration coupon system in the public distribution system (PDS) came to light three months ago, Food and Civil Supplies Minister U.T. Khader had called for stringent action and said the government would consider closing private fair price shops and rope in co-operative societies to run them.
Deputy Commissioners of all districts were instructed to detect such bogus coupons and initiate legal action and several cheating cases were detected.
In one such case, which came before the high court, the accused, S Murugan, who runs a fair price shop in city, had sought anticipatory bail fearing arrest. He was booked for the offences punishable under Sec 406 (criminal breach of trust) and 420 (cheating) of the IPC. The allegation against Murugan, who distributes free food coupons to the ration card holders, was that by hacking the password of the service centre, he had fabricated 567 bogus coupons and misappropriated the ration items and cheated the government.
However, the advocate representing Murugan submitted that he wasn’t aware of the 'technical' aspects and had not committed the offence as alleged by the prosecution.
The high court has granted him anticipatory bail, but imposed certain conditions that he shall appear before the Investigating Officer (IO), who is at liberty to interrogate him.
The court had said that in the event of his arrest, he shall be released on bail on executing a self bond of Rs 50,000 with one surety for the like sum and further he shall cooperate with the IO during further course of investigation and shall not indulge in activities as alleged in the complaint.
953 shops involved in scam
There are about 20,000 fair price shops, out of which about 12,000 are run by private people in the state. Reports suggest that the recent act of linking PDS to Aadhaar numbers has unearthed around 1.60 lakh bogus ration coupons across 953 fair price shops in the state. Bengaluru ranks number one with at least 400 shops reportedly involved in such irregularities.
