IIT Roorkee Director, 4 Others Face ‘Financial Fraud’ Charges

Picture courtesy: IIT Roorkee

Dehradun: Haridwar district’s Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate court of Roorkee has directed the police to lodge a case against the director of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee and four other staffers for alleged “financial fraud” in scholarships, central grants and construction money.

The court order came following a petition filed by a former IIT staffer Manipal Sharma, according to Hindustan Times. The former employee alleged that IIT director Ajit Kumar Chaturvedi, dean of IIT’s Sponsored Research & Industrial Consultancy (SRIC) Manish Shrikhande, assistant registrar (SRIC) Jitendra Dimri, junior assistant (SRIC) Dhiraj Upadhyay and clerk (SRIC) Rajesh Kumar committed financial fraud amounting to crores. He alleged that they have been siphoning off the money of grants and other aids to their bank accounts for more than a decade.

“The matter is already being investigated by the police and the institute had already lodged a complaint against one of the accused Upadhyay in June this year for siphoning off Rs 1.05 crore to his bank account,” IIT Roorkee’s media cell in-charge Sonika Srivastava said in a statement released by the institute.

“The police have also questioned the accused assistant registrar in its probe. The institute would continue to extend its full support to the police in the investigation,” the media cell in-charge said.