Hyderabad: The Directorate of Enforcement (ED) conducted search operations at eight locations in connection with the financial irregularities in the implementation of the Sheep Rearing Development Scheme in Telangana. Following an FIR registered by the ACB, Hyderabad. The ED probe revealed substantial funds were transferred to bank accounts of several persons towards payment in lieu of supply of sheep for beneficiaries under SRDS. The ED searches led to the recovery and seizure of incriminating material evidencing transactions indicating illegal payments in the form of kickbacks to various government officials and others. Documents pertaining to numerous bank accounts, including blank cheque books, passbooks and debit cards associated with over 200 suspected dummy accounts linked to an illegal online betting application, were recovered from one of the premises. Over 31 used mobile phones and over 20 SIM cards, suspected to have been utilized in the operation of the illegal activities. The investigation revealed that before the launch of SRDS, these beneficiaries were not involved in the sale of rearing of sheep business. Moreover, the probe revealed that no sale or purchase of sheep was ever done by these recipients of funds. The government funds were illegally diverted to bank accounts of bogus vendors. The CAG Audit Report for the period that ended on March-2021 revealed several irregularities in the implementation of the SRDS scheme — non-maintenance of beneficiary-wise details, improper record of invoices pertaining to transportation invoices and payments, payments against invoices containing fake passenger vehicles, duplicate tags allotted to sheep units, etc. The CAG audit report is limited to only 9 districts of the total 33 districts in Telangana, wherein estimated loss to the government was pegged at Rs 253.93 crore. Proportionately, for all the 33 districts in the state, the loss is likely to exceed Rs 1000 crore.
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