Hyderabad: The Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) team probing the Employees State Insurance (ESI) scam has taken into its custody seven of the suspects, to collect more information from them about the large-scale financial irregularities in the Insurance Medical Services (IMS) department since 2015.
The ACB had arrested 13 people including suspended IMS Director Ch. Devika Rani, Joint Director K. Padma and Assistant Director K. Vasantha Indira in connection with the scam.
On Wednesday, a team of senior officials from ACB took into custody Rani, Padma, Indira, pharmacist M. Radhika and senior assistant V. Harshavardhan along with the Omni Medi company managing director K. Srihari Babu and company representative Ch. Siva Nagaraju, all of whom were in judicial remand at the Chanchalguda prison.
From the prison, the officials took them to the ACB head office in Banjara Hills for questioning, following allegations that several pharmaceutical companies were involved in supplying medicines and kits to dispensaries and other hospitals of ESI at exorbitant prices in violation of norms since 2015, ACB officials wanted to elicit more information from Rani and others.
As of now, the officials verified the indents and other documents of only one quarter of a year and found financial irregularities amounting to more than Rs.11 crore. Authorities might focus more on the role played by the pharma companies that used to supply medicines and kits to dispensaries, in collusion with the arrested officials, sources said.
SOURCE:-(NSS)
