During investigation into the alleged theft of money from donation boxes at the Ram temple, Ayodhya, police recovered old forged receipt books from three accused persons. These old receipt books resembled those that were earlier printed by the temple’s Trust. The cops need to determine as to how much money was embezzled by the accused or others by using forged receipts. A few years, in Goa (maybe in the other States too) groups of people were moving house to house collecting funds for construction of the Ram temple. People liberally donated for a good cause. Most may not even have checked the volunteers’ credentials as the issue was sensitive and religious in nature.
Considering the above incident, donors now may have a nagging thought if fraudsters had not taken advantage of the situation. Similar instances of using forged receipt books may have and could happen even with charitable bodies, and by those collecting funds for several causes (schools, playgrounds, disaster, etc.), and towards cultural events, and by do-gooders.
Even traffic challans, government tax receipt is possible to be duplicated. Now that seeds of suspicion have been sowed in people’s mind and taking into account the regular occurrence of e-frauds ones need to be cautious and double-check, wherever possible, whenever there is donation in cash or kind to people or organisations.
Sridhar D’Iyer, Caranzalem
