NEW DELHI, Oct 23: More than three million dollars donated to the Indian prime minister’s relief fund for victims of disasters such as the Asian tsunami and Kashmir earthquake are missing, reports said on Tuesday.

The hole in the accounts came to light when the office of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh investigated a private petition filed under the 2005 Right to Information Act, the NDTV news channel reported.

Mujibur Rehman, an employee of the state-run Coal India Limited (CIL), filed the petition last year, NDTV said.

Rehman donated money to the fund along with thousands of his colleagues in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami and left millions homeless in southern India.

A subsequent inquiry found that $3m collected by CIL for several disasters including the 2005 Kashmir quake had been diverted or not yet deposited into the relief fund.

Also, of a total of $2.5 million CIL collected for the 2004 tsunami, some $75,000 were still missing. Officials in Singh’s office said they were aware of the story but had no immediate comment.

With the findings out in the open, Rehman told NDTV that he now feared for his life.

“I cannot file a case against them. I have to be careful when I leave home. They have done a breach of trust by holding the funds,” he said.

Ordinary Indians pay some $4.6 billion in bribes each year to obtain basic services such as water and electricity, according to a study by anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International.

Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perception Index for 2007 noted a marginal improvement in India, ranking it 72nd among 180 countries, against 70th out of 163 in 2006.

—AFP