In a bid to hoodwink Odisha’s welfare machinery, almost 2,500 construction workers appear to have defied the rules of mortality — they died on paper, collected death benefits, and then came back to life to authenticate their Aadhaar and collect their monthly ration.

An audit has blown the lid off what appears to be a bizarre and massive fraud under the State’s Nirman Shramik welfare scheme. As many as 2,487 construction workers were declared dead and their nominees were paid death assistance, even though the workers continued to draw subsidised food grains under the National Food Security Act (NFSA) and State Food Security Scheme after their recorded deaths.