Ex-Court Staff Gets 37-Year Jail Term for Rs 38 Lakh Fraud in Motor Accident Claims

The Chief Judicial Magistrate Court at Kallakurichi has sentenced a former court staff member to 37 years in prison for misappropriating Rs 38 lakh from Motor Accident Claims records and forging judges' signatures.

The court convicted Arivuselvi, who had worked as a sheristadar assistant at the court between 2012 and 2015, on multiple charges and imposed a fine of Rs 30,000. Her prison sentence will run consecutively. Her son Varadharajan and an associate, Tamilarasan, were each sentenced to 27 years in prison, with their terms also set to run consecutively, along with fines of Rs 17,000 each. A fourth accused in the case, Senthilkumar, was acquitted after charges against him were not proved beyond reasonable doubt.

The fraudulent activities came to light following an inspection ordered by the Madras High Court. During the scrutiny, the then Principal Subordinate Judge Sureshkumar noticed suspicious signatures and multiple irregularities in Motor Accident Claims records that had been disposed of in 2012 and 2014.

Following the discovery of the anomalies, the CB-CID in Villupuram officially registered a case on December 18, 2021, and launched a detailed investigation into the court records.

Investigators uncovered that Arivuselvi had reused settled case numbers to manipulate the compensation process. She diverted compensation funds directly into bank accounts linked to Varadharajan and Tamilarasan after forging the signatures of judges on cheques. While the initial probe uncovered a misappropriation of Rs 28 lakh, subsequent investigation revealed an additional Rs 10 lakh had been siphoned off using the same method, bringing the total embezzled sum to Rs 38 lakh.