First ‘fraud’ case in freight corridor, CBI begins probe

The CBI has begun probing the first case of alleged financial irregularity in the Rs 50,000-crore Dedicated Freight Corridor project of the Indian Railways.
An internal probe by Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Ltd (DFCCIL) — the special purpose vehicle executing the mega project — has detected “collusion and criminal conspiracy” by DFCCIL officials to allegedly defraud the government of crores during land acquisition. The scam, initially pegged at around Rs 100 crore, involves “inflated compensation” being paid to landowners for items other than land in the Vadodara region.
As per the Railway Amendment Act 2008, not just for the land, compensation has to be also paid for items like standing crops, borewells, shops, huts, cattle-sheds, trees and other structures. The internal probe has found that in the Vadodara section, officials have ostensibly paid a lot more for these items than their market rates.