Ballia Recruitment racket: 37 nurses revealed to have knock-off joining letters, salaries stopped
The matter came to fore after the then CMO Dr Vijay Pati Dwivedi lodged an FIR on February 22 in connection with the fraudulent appointments.
The ongoing probe into the Ballia nurse recruitment racket has revealed that the number of nurses who got appointment via duplicate joining letters is now over three dozen.
“To be exact, salaries of 37 nurses have been stopped till now as their appointment was done fraudulently. All of them are absconding since their names figured on the list of nurses with duplicate joining letters,” Ballia chief medical officer Dr Vijay Yadav said.
The matter came to fore after the then CMO Dr Vijay Pati Dwivedi lodged an FIR on February 22 in connection with the fraudulent appointments. The racket had surfaced after an inspection at a primary health centre (PHC) in November. During the inspection, Dr Dwivedi asked a newly recruited staff nurse about the “ratio of ORS (oral rehydration solution) to be mixed in water for a patient of dehydration”. The nurse couldn’t answer the question.
The nurse also was not able to answer other related queries, which triggered a broader investigation against all newly recruited nursing staff that revealed fraudulent appointments.
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Initially, it was found 15 nurses, including two women nurses, had used the joining letters of another nurse whose appointment was genuine. These 15 candidates changed the names on the same joining letter. They got jobs on the basis of the knock-off joining letter and the ongoing probe has revealed the number of such appointees is 37.
“We have screened all appointments done in 2022 and 2023. I think the number stops here. All 37 have been issued notices but they are absconding. They were deployed in different health facilities in Ballia district and appointed between 2022 and 2023,” Dr Yadav said.
According to the investigation, the ‘cloned’ letters had the same dispatch number, letter head, the signature of the directorate officer and other details, but the names of candidates were changed. The fraudsters even allegedly managed to get verification email from the health directorate sent to CMO Ballia office.
A nurse in government service gets between ₹60,000 and ₹70,000 as monthly salary. The Ballia police are investigating the case based on the FIR but are yet to arrest anyone among the suspects. The health directorate had also conducted an internal probe into appointments made between 2019 and 2025, a period during which 5768 nurses were appointed to government hospitals across the state. Till now, no other district has reported a similar fraud.
