Acting on a complaint filed by the District Chief Medical Officer (CMO), police filed an FIR against 15 people, including two women, for their alleged involvement in securing fraudulent appointments with forged documents at various health centres in Uttar Pradesh's Ballia.
According to police, the accused were staff nurses at primary and community health centres across Ballia.
The scam surfaced following a complaint lodged by Dr Vijay Pati Dwivedi, the CMO, who said it was brought to his attention that some employees had allegedly submitted forged documents to gain employment and had been drawing salaries for their services, thus misleading the department.
Subsequently, the CMO set up a seven-member team to investigate the matter. The team's findings raised concerns, prompting him to issue a direction on October 3, 2024, to halt work and salary disbursements to the accused employees.
"They were also directed to appear before the team for verification of their appointment records. However, all the workers went into hiding after the directive," said the CMO. Police are investigating the matter.
UP: Village head in Ballia arrested for raping woman
Ballia made headlines for another wrong reason. A rape case was reported in the district, in which a head of a village in the Phephna Police Station area was on Friday arrested for allegedly raping a 40-year-old woman.
Phephna SHO Ajay Kumar Tripathi said that a woman living in a village here was raped by the village pradhan Rahul Paswan about a month ago.
On the complaint of the woman, a case was registered against Rahul on Thursday under sections 64 (2)M (punishment for rape) and 351(2) (criminal intimidation) of the BNS, he said.
The accused was arrested on Friday from Ekouni Tiraha area and sent to jail after completing the legal proceedings, the SHO said.
(With PTI inputs)