Hyderabad: The CBI has booked a case of cheating, conspiracy and forgery against well known city jewellery trader Prisha Pearls for colluding with the postal department employees of Humayunagar Sub Post Office and causing a loss of Rs 7.66 crore to the postal department.

The accused Sailesh Agarwal, Director Prisha Pearls India and Nilesh Agarwal, MD, used lakhs of coloured photocopies of slips generated by franking machines and used them for VPP parcels, the CBI alleged.

A case was also booked against government officials N. Kameswara Rao the officiating sub-post master, S. Padmavathi, the deputy sub-post master and S. Venkata Swamy the officiating sub-post master of Humayunagar Sub Post Office.

Prisha Pearls had been given a licence for using a Remotely Managing Franking Machine on August 28, 2013, for booking Value Payable letter (VPL) and Value Payable Parcel (VPP) articles. The firm later applied and got the licence cancelled in 2015. But even after the cancellation, the firm generated fake RMFM impressions and submitted their articles at the Humayunnagar Sub Post Office.

In November 2015, it was found that there was a huge discrepancy in the number of articles booked by the firm and revenue credited to the department. Further investigations revealed that the firm had booked articles by affixing copies of colored photocopies of franked impressions. The department of posts suffered a loss of `7.66 crore through the excess booking of 18.25 lakh articles.

As per procedure, the post office has to submit a statement of mailing along with the articles presented for dispatch. The deputy post master has to maintain a register for each franking machine and SOM presented by the franking machine user has to be pasted on the register. The postal authorities failed to comply with standard norms and conspired with the accused thereby depriving the exchequer of crores. The complaint was filed by Hyderabad City Division Senior Superintendent of Post offices H.R. Chandra-shekarachar.