Vigilance raid reveals scam continues at Chennai Central

Raids conducted by railway vigilance department at parcel offices in Central since Friday afternoon have revealed that agents were sending parcels in excess of the booked volume. Only this time, they have changed the modus operandi, ‘underweighing’ parcels at the time of booking instead of splitting consignments in to batches.

Vigilance sleuths, who raided the parcel offices well past midnight on Saturday, have found out that several parcels, especially one’s meant to be sent to Howrah, weighed more than the entries made in the booking records.

Railway sources privy to the raid revealed to DT Next that the vigilance team which has been scrutinising records related to parcels sent to Howrah found that many parcels, which weighed over 100kg were recorded around 70kg in the system.

“A parcel exceeding 100 kg would be charged twice the hauling fee. So, agents along with a few staff record them as 70-90kg, whereas the actual weight of the parcel would be over 100kg, in many cases around 130kg. This used to be the popular scheme of agent-staff network till it drew CBI attention a few years ago,” a railway source in the know said, revealing that vigilance inspectors have collected a total of Rs 35,000 for undervalued (deliberately weighed less) parcels during the raid.

Understandably, railway officials were astounded by agents going about the scam even while commercial department and RPF was probing last week’s parcel pilferage. “Disciplinary action has been initiated against five staff for the widely reported theft of 11 parcels. Two departments are probing it, but the agents have continued to overload parcels, and that too from the same Wall Tax Road office,” a surprised senior SR officer requesting anonymity said.

Meanwhile, it has been reliably learnt that RPF had caught hold of the person (agent’s representative) who scooted off with the 11-parcels last week only to be bailed out by his agent. “The agent’s representative was questioned for a few minutes at RPF office, but the agent came out of the where and took him away,” the source disclosed.

Ironically, the chief security commissioner of SR has sought a detailed report on the eleven missing parcels from the division, as did the chief commercial manage of the zone who has set a week for her six divisional heads to report on the functioning of parcel offices.