The First Hundred Days
The founding investigation: a district treasury that paid out to names no census had ever recorded.
Kozhikode·By M. Thomas·Kerala desk
Our first published investigation began with a photocopied disbursement register handed over in a bus station waiting room. Over fourteen weeks we matched 1,180 payment entries against electoral rolls, ration records and the 2011 census. Two hundred and six recipients could not be found in any of them. The district treasury called it a clerical variance. The state finance department, six months later, called it fraud.
What it changed
Three district officers suspended; treasury reconciliation ordered statewide.
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