A 33-year-old assistant manager of the Food Corporation of India (FCI) has been booked by the Kasturba Marg police for allegedly duping the said government organization to the tune of Rs 22 lakhs by allegedly producing fake medical bills. The accused identified as Siddhesh Mantri is said to have produced total of 140 fake bills by saying that his mother was suffering from kidney related ailment and he continued to embezzle money in small chunks from 2015 to 2017 and the entire fraud came into light after the top level officials of the organization suspected a large number of incoming bills and decided to unearth the scam by investigating it. According to the police, the complainant in the case Pranil More (51) who heads the operations at FCI in Navi Mumbai after consulting the legal department lodged the FIR where he told the police that Siddhesh's father was an employee of the FCI and after he passed away, Siddhesh got the job in 2014. As per the police reports, Mantri used to submit the prolonged medical certificate, fake medical bills in the name of Lifeline Medicare Hospital in Goregaon, Karuna Hospital in Borivali and Lifeline Hospital in Panvel where signatures of different physicians and doctors were shown to avert suspicion. In late 2017, when some of the bills went to the officials of the central government for clearances, it caught eyeballs of the senior officers who found errors in the processing of the bills for payments. "The regional medical officer, chief general manager and the vigilance officers when probed the matter in-depth, the loopholes came into light. In most of the bills, the admission date of the patient is missing and many such flaws were found in different bills. We have registered a case under section 420, 465, 467, 468, 471 and 474 of the IPC," said a senior police officer.

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