The CBI on Thursday registered three cases relating to alleged irregularities in the NRHM funds in Uttar Pradesh to the tune of Rs 250 crore. It booked IAS officer and the then Principal Secretary of the Health and Family Welfare Department of the State Pradeep Shukla and others and conducted searches at 44 locations in six cities of the State besides Delhi. Shukla is presently member of the revenue board and has been named in all the three cases. The agency had registered five Preliminary Enquiries at the behest of the Allahabad High Court on November 15 last year. All the five PEs continue to remain live and more cases are likely to be registered in connection with the scam. Searches were conducted in six cities in Lucknow, Moradabad, Varanasi; Muzaffarnagar; Kanpur; Noida and in Delhi. The searches were conducted at the official and residential premises of Shukla, former MD of UP Processing and Construction Cooperative Federation Ltd (PACCFED) VK Chaudhary, former MD of UP Small Industries Corporation (UPSIC) and Abhay Kumar Vajpayee, GM of UPSIC. The first case refers to alleged criminal conspiracy amongst officials of Department of Health and Family Welfare, PACCFED and Directors of three private firms including Moradabad-based SRJ Infra Tech Pvt Ltd and SS Industries and Gajroal-based C&C Metal Farming Pvt Ltd. The allegations relate to award of contract of upgradation of 89 district level hospitals involving an amount of Rs 89 crores. The estimated loss to Government exchequer is around Rs 25 lakh per hospital. On the basis of payment made so far, estimated loss caused is about Rs 5.89 crore, a CBI spokesperson said here. The second case was registered against officials of Health Department, UP Project Corporation Ltd (UPPCL) and the directors of three private firms including Ghaziabad-based Surgicon Medicorp, Kanpur-basedAnod Pharma and Noida-based Unicore India Pvt Ltd and other unknown persons, CBI sources said. This case relates to award of contract of upgradation of 40 district level hospitals in UP on the basis of forged/bogus documents and/or by paying illegal gratification to the health department officials and UPPCL. “It was alleged that wrongful loss to the extent of Rs 25 lakhs per hospital was caused to the Government exchequer in the said contract in this project of Rs 160 crores. On the basis of payment made so far, the estimated loss caused is approximately Rs 5.84 crores. The third case relates to alleged irregularities in the work related to installation and related civil works and also renovation of toilets in various hospitals of UP. This case was registered against the officials of Health and Family Welfare department; officials of UPSIC; three other private firms based at Kanpur including Anod Plasma Spray, Anod Pharma and Sofgel Capsulation and 3 private persons and other unknown persons. A wrongful loss of approximately Rs 3.5 crores to the Government exchequer is alleged to have been caused as per estimates on date in the award of this contract which was given at exorbitant rates in a pre-decided manner. CBI had earlier registered five cases on January 2 this year in connection with alleged irregularities in NRHM funds implementation.