India, April 8 -- The education department has initiated criminal action against five school education officers from Nagpur for their involvement in a scam related to forgery and authorising inclusion of fake teachers and non-teaching staff in government-aided schools in order to pilfer money through their salaries. This has caused a loss of crores of rupees to the state exchequer, and the department is now verifying from district-level officers if there are similar cases in other districts.

Twelve schools in Nagpur had fraudulently put 580 fake teachers and non-teaching staff members on the rolls in the 'Shalarth' portal to draw a salary in their name. The school education department has been paying these salaries since 2019, leading to...