After Chilume, another outsourcing agency under police radar

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: After the allegations against Chilume Organisation were revealed in the city, another private firm has come under the police radar for defrauding the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) by allegedly collecting money towards water bills from customers and also by misusing the login credentials of the BWSSB portal.

Revenue manager of the BWSSB Nagaveni, and contract-based bill collectors Varadaraju HK and Kiran Kumar BT through the Navodaya agency were among the nine accused arrested in connection with the irregularities, sources from the Bommanahalli police station said.

The police said that Nagaveni was arrested based on evidence and statements that she had allegedly shared the login credentials with the agency staff and also assisted the accused in the irregularities. The police expressed suspicion that more employees of the BWSSB might have been involved in the fraud. “ We have issued notices to some of the officials under suspicion,” said an officer from Bommanahalli police station.

The accused Nagaveni allegedly had the login details to the portal, which was created to check and monitor the payment of water bills and deposit the paid money into the BWSSB’s official bank account.

Apart from Nagaveni, another senior official, Manjunath, also had access to the account, sources said. It’s alleged that Nagaveni had shared the details with the outsourced employee Kiran Kumar who would swindle off the money by making wrong entries of the payments into the BWSSB portal.

The fraud came to light during a recent internal audit. Some of the residents also complained that they had paid bill amounts to the outsourced agents who had visited them for meter readings.