PATNA, Jan. 20 -- An accounts officer, who acted as a whistleblower in exposing a Rs.44.5 lakh fraud at Patna's All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), has alleged serious violations of the government's General Financial Rules (GFR) and systemic lapses in the functioning of the institute's finance wing. In an internal communication dated January 6 to deputy director (administration) Nilotpal Bal, accounts officer Piyush Anand flagged that bank signatories authorised to operate AIIMS-Patna's accounts were allegedly changed on several occasions on verbal instructions of the head of finance and accounts, without any formal office order or written approval by the competent authority. The letter, accessed by Hindustan Times, states that such practices violate Rule 53 of the GFR, 2017, which mandates that authorisation to operate government bank accounts - including any change of signatories - must be backed by written orders issued by the competent authority and duly recorded. Anand said alterations based merely on verbal instructions, without documentation or institutional circulation, amount to a breach of financial norms. The allegations come in the wake of an internal audit conducted on January 4, which found that although over Rs.44 lakh was withdrawn from the AIIMS cash vault between April 1 and December 31, 2025, a significant portion was missing. This led to the suspension and subsequent arrest of chief cashier Anurag Aman on January 8 on charges of fraud and misappropriation of government funds amounting to Rs.44.5 lakh. While the accused later returned the alleged embezzled amount, disciplinary and legal proceedings are continuing. In his representation, Anand also raised concerns over deviations from the prescribed reporting hierarchy. He alleged that Aman, a pay level-7 Group B officer, reported directly to Vishal Kumar, the finance advisor and chief accounts officer (FA&CAO), a senior post typically classified at pay level 13, bypassing established institutional channels. Anand further alleged autocratic functioning in the finance wing, claiming that Kumar routinely marked files directly to selected dealing assistants and only later placed them before accounts officers. In some cases, he said, dealing assistants marked files directly to Kumar, bypassing accounts officers altogether. Questioning internal governance, Anand wrote that no written distribution of work had ever been issued to him since he joined the institute over a year ago. He claimed Kumar had instructed him not to undertake any work in the absence of a formal office order and had restrained him from pursuing certain tasks initiated on his own. He also alleged that on January 5, Kumar instructed accounts staff not to share official data with any accounts officer without his consent, leading to a breakdown in the flow of information through formal institutional channels. The accounts officer further accused the administration of misrepresentation in an office order issued by the deputy director (administration) on January 6, which stated that Anand was discharging accounting duties related to hospital revenue and schemes from October 12, 2025. Anand asserted that no such assignment was ever formally given to him. According to people familiar with the matter, Anand was assigned work at the OPD billing counter on December 17 last year on the instructions of executive director Prof (Brig) Dr Raju Agarwal, a move that eventually led to the detection of the Rs.44.5 lakh fraud. Investigators have alleged that chief cashier Aman withheld cash collected from patients for up to three days instead of depositing it immediately into the institute's bank account. An official said Aman indicated during the inquiry that he deposited the money into his wife's Bank of India account and invested it in the stock market and cryptocurrency, adding that this aspect is under examination. Responding to queries, Vishal Kumar said, "I am not authorised to speak to the media." Anand did not respond to phone calls or text messages. Hindustan Times emailed and sent a WhatsApp message to executive director Dr Agarwal at 9.37am on Monday seeking his response and details of any follow-up action taken. There was no response till the filing of this report at 7pm. AIIMS-Patna public relations officer Aseem Kumar Mishra said, "I have no information in this regard and will not be able to respond."...