During a Swachhata Mission drive in a Kendriya Vidyalaya in Ahmedabad, authorities recovered cash and gold worth Rs 1.29 crore from unattended lockers. During a Swachhata Mission drive in a Kendriya Vidyalaya in Ahmedabad, authorities recovered cash and gold worth Rs 1.29 crore from unattended lockers.

The Income Tax Department has been roped in to help the probe into recovery of cash and gold, worth Rs 1.29 crore, from unattended lockers in a Kendriya Vidyalaya here. The lockers were opened during a Swachhata Mission drive on the school campus on Saturday.

The I-T sleuths have asked the Ahmedabad police, who seized the cash and other valuables, not to hand it over to anybody. The police would question teachers and their spouses.

Rs 1 crore in cash was kept in neatly stacked bundles in black plastic bags in a locker of the staff room of Kendriya Vidyalaya, ONGC, Chandkheda, while 25 gold bars of 100 gram each were kept in padded cloth pouches in the adjacent locker.

“KV ONGC, Chandkheda, was asked to conduct a cleanliness drive at the earliest, especially of the staff room that was in a very neglected state,” said deputy commissioner K V Sangathan (KVS) Ahmedabad region P Dev who visited the school along with other senior officials on Monday.

On January 30, the school principal passed a circular in the school announcing cleanliness drive on January 31 after 11 am. “The school staff room has two huge steel cabinets that are divided into 20 lockers each carrying considerable storage space. There were total five lockers to which nobody claimed ownership,” said principal Awadhesh Kumar. When locker number 15 was forcibly opened, the school staff found five black packets containing 1,000 notes. Gold bars were recovered from locker No. 14.

“I received a call from the principal at 1 pm on Saturday about the recovery of cash from the school locker. I immediately informed my seniors in Delhi. But soon, I received another phone call informing that 21 gold bars of 100 gram each have also been recovered from second locker,” said P Dev. The school principal said: “While in the other three unclaimed lockers, there were old marksheets and books, in locker No. 14 and 15 there were gold and cash.”

When asked what is the possibility that these lockers can be used by an outsider or even school employees other than teaching staff, the school principal ruled out any such possibility, claiming the entire school campus is monitored under his close supervision. Inspector K K Desai, who is probing the case, said, “We have asked for the list of teachers working in KV at present. Nobody has claimed the ownership to the locker yet.”

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