Thiruvananthapuram, Aug 3 While Kerala Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief K. Surendran demanded probe by a federal agency into a fraud committed by a treasury official, the Congress sought a comprehensive vigilance probe, here on Monday.
The Rs 2 crore fraud by an accountant attached to the Treasury surfaced last week. M.R. Bijulal, the official, is absconding. His wife, who is a school teacher and named accused in the case, pleaded ignorance.
"I don't have any clue. I have no role. I don't know how much money has come into my account. Biju had said there were some issues as he played an online card game. When I asked him about it, he left the home and is missing since then," she said.
With opposition parties raising the issue, Kerala Finance Minister Thomas Issac said in a Facebook post on Monday Bijulal would be dismissed from the service.
"The order for dismissal will be released within a few days after completing the procedure. This is not just an irregularity. Bijulal has committed a serious cyber crime. A special investigation team is probing the case.
"All, except one official who detected the fraud, will be shifted out from this particular office," Issac said.
Issac became active after Leader of Opposition Ramesh Chennithala wrote to the vigilance director to conduct a comprehensive probe as financial frauds had been committed earlier also.
The fraud was detected on July 28. According to the preliminary probe, it was committed using the password and log-in name of a recently retired official. As such a fraud can't be committed by just one person there are three points of online checking it remains to be seen how many other officials were involved in it.
( With inputs from IANS )