SHILLONG, Jan 5: A year and half after a chowkidar of the Mawkhar Presbyterian Church was arrested for embezzlement of church funds amounting to Rs 4.67 crore, a charge-sheet is finally going to be filed. Thanks to a young brigade of faithful who defied church intrigues to push the case to its logical end.
According to the case record, the fraudulent transactions have been going on since 2013 but due to lack of oversight the crime could only be detected in August 2019.
While the church elders apparently don’t want to rake up the matter for fear of adverse publicity the younger church members are keen to see the end of this great deception.
Speaking to this correspondent, several younger members of the Church said, “We have all been contributing our mite towards helping the church in its mission of serving the poor and downtrodden and here is this person entrusted with depositing all the Sunday collection and tithes, using the money ostensibly to promote his own business.”
Alfast Bareh the chowkidar, it is learnt runs a security and placement agency. What the church members are miffed about is that the Pastor in charge during the time of detection of the fraud, has also stopped coming to church, thereby setting tongues wagging about his role in the whole mess and also that of the treasurer.
Church members allege that the chowkidar regularly produced deposit slips of the money deposited at State Bank of India, Bara Bazar Branch, duly signed and sealed by the SBI Branch when actually no deposit actually reached the bank. This implies that he had made a bank seal, the church members allege.
What they also feel aggrieved about is that the Church and Synod did not think it necessary to carry out a special audit to detect the detailsof the fraud and hold the fraudster(s) responsible. They allege that the racket had been going on since 2013 and due vigilance would have ensured that such a large amount could not have been siphoned off by Bareh without fear of detection.
Earlier before the massive fraud was detected, the MeECL served a disconnection notice to the Church for non payment of electricity bills to the tune of over Rs 90,000, sometime in 2010, when actually the Church was paying the bills regularly or so they were told by the chowkidar who was entrusted with all the financial transactions.
This raises questions as to the role of the Treasurer, who is supposed to exercise due diligence on all income and expenditure of the Church and maintain the books of accounts. Incidentally, the Church account is digitally transacted, hence every debit or credit should show up in the registered phone number. The question again is whose phone number is registered with the bank.
Allegations are rife that the chowkidar, Alfast Bareh is only a pawn and there is a mastermind behind all this. In fact sources claim that since 2017 an amount of over Rs one crore was missing from the church and of the two treasurers then, one had expired. The Church Committee was allegedly not informed about this and no one raised a stink. It was only in August 2019 that an FIR was finally filed. Sources also claim that there is a lot of pressure from senior politicians on the police to go slow on the case for reasons best known to them.
When SP, East Khasi Hills S. Nongtynger was contacted he said that the case has been thoroughly investigated and the charge-sheet should be submitted within this month. He said the investigation has taken time because the fraud had remained undetected for several years.
The church members also say that there is also a lot of church politics involved where some members wish to protect the reputation of the Church by seeking to silence the vocal members and even saying that the chowkidar should be given time to refund the amount stolen.
“As members of the Mawkhar Church we are very uneasy about this unsolved matter because we have been paying our tithes and weekly contributions as well and we wish to ensure accountability in the system. And because we are a Church we have to be more accountable than secular institutions,” the young members said, adding that just because the fraud happened in Church does not mean that everything should be “forgive and forget.”
The Mawkhar Church has about 10,000 members and it is only fair that they see justice in this case and also see the perpetrators of the fraud booked.