HC employee held for misusing funds

The City police, on Saturday, arrested an employee of the Finance department of the High Court for embezzling funds to the tune of Rs 20 lakh.

The arrested, Jayaram Nayak, has been working with the department for many years now. The embezzlement came to light recently during the quarterly scrutiny of accounts by the department. Every quarter, the High Court would usually incur an expenditure of upto Rs 40 lakh. However, this quarter there was a steep increase in the expenses by Rs 20 lakh. Alarmed by this, a senior official with the Finance Department had lodged a complaint with the Vidhana Soudha police station.

The police who investigated the matter arrested Nayak. Police sources say that every expenditure more than Rs 25,000 has to be cleared by the Chief Justice personally and later, the deputy registrar has to sign the cheques. There were four cheques of Rs five lakh each that the deputy registrar C Chandrashekhar signed on April 22. However, records showed that this was not brought to the notice of the Chief Justice.

Further inquiry revealed that Nayak had said that the Chief Justice had agreed for the expenditure and got the cheques signed by the deputy registrar. The cheques were encashed from the Reserve Bank of India on May 9, 2013 by Nayak. He has now confessed to have used the money to clear a personal loan of about
23 lakh.