In Madhya Pradesh, probe into how government bought moong from farmers who never grew it

Some farmers in the hinterlands of Madhya Pradesh's Raisen district have allegedly discovered that they had apparently sold moong to the government without ever growing it, registering it or taking it to a procurement centre, The Indian Express has learnt.

Their land records had been used to create procurement registrations they said they knew nothing about. When the Economic Offences Wing allegedly began tracing those entries, it uncovered a moong procurement fraud hiding in plain sight.

Three computer operators running procurement terminals at cooperative societies in the district have now been booked, with investigators alleging they bought moong off the open market at throwaway prices and sold it back to the government as their own harvest, using the identities of farmers who had never signed up to grow it.

The alleged scheme, run out of three societies in Badi tehsil across two procurement seasons, netted the men roughly Rs 13.3 lakh, according to investigators who pieced together the alleged fraud from land records, farmer testimonies and two internal cooperative department inquiries that preceded the criminal case.

During a complaint verification by the EOW, fake registrations were collected and witnesses were interrogated, officials said. Every operator at a cooperative society has access to the land records of farmers in the area serviced by that centre, including those who own agricultural plots but have never registered to sell their crop through the government's support-price scheme.

"The agricultural land which was not registered by any farmer was fraudulently registered by the accused persons in the names of their acquaintances, and Moong was weighed through such registrations," the officer explained.

The EOW investigation allegedly found that by making these fake registrations, the accused persons would purchase moong from local markets at a lower price and then sell it at the government procurement centres at the higher minimum support price, pocketing the difference as profit.

From the entire investigation, it was allegedly found that by making fake registrations, the MSP sum is received from the government on procurement; in return, Moong is purchased from the local market at a lower price and, by making fake registrations, the produce purchased at low prices is believed to have been procured in the names of farmers.

The spread between what the operators paid and what they collected is where the alleged fraud generated its profit, investigators said. Shriram Thakur, a computer operator at Dehri Kala, was found to have registered 8.095 hectares under one entry and another 4.532 hectares under a second, together allegedly yielding 151.524 quintals of moong procured at the 2025 support price of Rs 8,682 a quintal — a payout of Rs 13,15,531.

Investigators established that the moong he actually supplied against those registrations was bought in bulk for about Rs 4,54,572, leaving him a margin of Rs 8,60,959. According to the police, accused Ranjeet Thakur registered 3.523 hectares in his own name, procured 42.276 quintals for Rs 3,67,040, and is estimated to have spent Rs 1,26,828 acquiring the moong he delivered — a profit of Rs 2,40,212.

At Bharkachh Kala, operator Gaurav Thakur allegedly registered 3.428 hectares, procured 41.136 quintals worth Rs 3,57,142, and spent an estimated Rs 1,23,408 sourcing it, clearing Rs 2,33,734. Investigators arrived at these figures by comparing the men's procurement receipts against prevailing mandi rates for moong of comparable quality in Bareli over the same window — rates that swung from as low as Rs 1,500 a quintal to as high as Rs 8,800 depending on grade, against a fixed government support price of Rs 8,558 in 2024-25 and Rs 8,682 the following season.

Ritu Garhwal, secretary of the Agricultural Produce Market Committee, told investigators that the procurement route was never the only option open to the men whose names were used: "farmers can independently sell their produce".

None of this surfaced through the procurement system's own checks. It surfaced because a farmer noticed his name on paperwork he had never signed. Rajeev Patel, who lives in Badi tehsil, wrote to the Economic Offences Wing in May 2025 alleging that Ranjeet Thakur and others at the Dehri Kala, Bharkachh Kala and Googalwada societies were registering land without the owners' consent.

When investigators went back to the farmers named in those registrations, several described the same experience of discovering, after the fact, that their land had been used. Babulal said a registration had been created against his plot for the 2025-26 season "the registration centre being Krishak Seva Sahakari Samiti Dehri Kala" — a claim he had allegedly never made.

Chandrabhan Singh Patel said land belonging to his wife and daughter-in-law had been registered fraudulently in his daughter-in-law's name under four separate farmer codes, which he "stated … to be fake registrations." Sandeep Patel said a registration in his wife Diksha Patel's name at the same centre "was fake." Investigators noted that this was not an isolated lapse in paperwork but the pattern across the cases in which "the registered farmers had no knowledge of them, nor had they given any kind of consent or provided any Kolinama." By the time the Economic Offences Wing opened its case, the cooperative department had already investigated the same allegations twice and reached broadly the same conclusions, without either inquiry resulting in a police complaint.

The first, ordered by the Deputy Commissioner of Cooperative Societies in Raisen in October 2025 and led by senior cooperative inspector A.P. Singh, concluded that Shriram Thakur "had himself added the land of farmers' Sikmi/Kolinama into the farmers' accounts, which was found to be against the rules"; the department dismissed him from service the following April.

Patel filed a second complaint in May 2026, prompting another inquiry, this one...