PUNE: The Indian Army’s 330 Infantry Brigade’s military canteen has been duped of Rs 2.8 lakh by two agents from whom they had purchased a point of sale (POS) machine for transactions. Instead of transferring the amounts collected from sale of various goods in canteen’s account, the accused persons kept them with themselves.
Based on complaint from Nilesh Patil of the Canteen Stores Department (CSD) at Aundh Military Station, Sangvi police has registered an FIR against Anand Jagdish Vaishnav of Thane and Anil Chandrakant Fulelu of Sangvi. Vaishnav runs Sai Cash company which installs the POS machines.
According to police, after the demonetisation in November last year, the government instructed its departments to go cashless. The CSD canteen was also looking for POS machines. The traders usually procured these machines from banks where they have current accounts. However, due to huge demands the banks were not able to supply them. The CSD officials, unable to get them from their bank, opted for the machine through a middleman Fulelu of Sangvi.
Police officials said that when the POS machines are linked to current accounts, the customer swipes his/ her debit/credit card to make purchases and the amount is credited to the merchant’s account. However, in CSD’s case, the amount used to be deposited in the account of accused Vaishnav, who used to transfer the money to canteen’s bank account every week. After one week of POS machine installation, the daily collections became high and the accused was not transferring the whole amount. Whenever the military authorities confronted him, he used to give reasons of technical glitch. The accused had not transferred Rs 2.8 lakh when the authorities stopped using the machine.
The Army officials sent soldiers to trace Fulelu and Vaishnav but they remained untraceable. Finally the Army officials approached Pune city police and registered an FIR on Saturday. The accused have been booked for offences under sections 406 (criminal breach of trust), 420 (cheating), 34 (common intention) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). Police sub inspector Sandip Bagul is further investigating the case.
