The Haryana State Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau (SV&ACB) filed a chargesheet against three accused in a Kaithal court for allegedly siphoning off about ₹45 lakh through forged documents in an infamous “post-matric scholarship scam”.
In a statement on Wednesday, the ACB said that the accused—Dharambir, Rajesh Kumar and Naveen Kumar—allegedly orchestrated the fraud by opening fake bank accounts in the names of 91 students during the 2013–14 and 2014–15 academic sessions.
In its damning 2018-19 fiscal report and tabled on the floor of Haryana Vidhan Sabha in 2021, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) had reported that suspected fraudulent payments to the tune of multi-crore were released by manipulating Aadhaar numbers of students under the post-matric scholarship scheme between 2014-19 in Haryana.
Investigators found that the accused retained control over the bank accounts and used them to divert scholarship funds. “The accused executed the fraud by preparing fake scholarship applications and showing bogus admissions in Punjab-based educational institutions,” the ACB said.
As per the ACB, the documents were backed with forged college stamps, fake signatures of principals and fabricated attendance records to make them authentic. These documents were submitted to the district welfare officer’s office in Kaithal, following which the scholarship amount was sanctioned.
The ACB said the accused allegedly withdrew ₹44,59,760 through biometric authentication, cheques and other means and transferred the funds into their own accounts, causing losses to both the Haryana government and genuine beneficiaries.
A case was registered on December 19, 2023, under relevant sections of the Prevention of Corruption Act and the Indian Penal Code. The three accused were arrested on December 29, 2025. While Naveen Kumar has been on bail since February 6, 2026, Dharambir and Rajesh Kumar are in judicial custody. Another accused in the case, Hukum Chand Gupta, the retired bank official, is yet to be arrested, the Bureau said, adding that chargesheet has been filed after a detailed probe.
CAG suspected fraudulent payments of ₹19 crore
The scam had come to the fore during the 2021 budget session, when the CAG audit reports tabled in the Assembly pointed towards suspected fraudulent payments of ₹19 crore between 2014-19 in Haryana. “The suspected fraudulent payments were made by manipulating Aadhaar numbers of students,” the CAG report (2018-19 fiscal) stated.
The financial irregularities CAG had detected in “suspected fraudulent scholarship payments” ranged from ₹4.74 crore made to students studying outside Haryana, to “fraudulent payment of ₹9.65 crore”, that could not be verified by CAG with the supporting records.
Multi-layer verification to ensure allocation of funds
Meanwhile, last month the Haryana government enabled a multi-layer verification mechanism to disburse scholarship to Scheduled Caste (SC) and Other Backward Class (OBC) students eligible for the scholarship scheme. The students will be first verified by the nodal officer of the concerned institution.
After being verified, the district nodal officer and the city magistrate will verify the applications, following which the state nodal officer will transfer the scholarship amount directly into the bank accounts of the registered students. The annual family income of the student should not exceed ₹2.5 lakh and the student must be a resident of Haryana.
“Greater transparency has been introduced in the implementation of the scheme with the objective to ensure that full benefit reaches eligible students,” the state government had said while announcing the new verification process last month.
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