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The Economic Offences Wing (EOW), Odisha has arrested two more accused in connection with the multi-state scholarship and solar equipment fraud. The accused- Nishant Prakash Jaiswal and Amar Danish, the respective State Field Officer and Project In-Charge of Vastav India Trust for Odisha- were produced before the Ld. Court of JMFC, Ranchi and were brought to Bhubaneswar on the strength of 43 hours transit remand.
Both the accused were arrested based on the complaint filed by Sebati Mahanta and others against Vastav India Trust. The complainant had alleged that the President, Secretary, CMD and project in-charge of “Vastav India Trust” had duped the public and parents on the pretext of selling/supplying LED bulbs and giving pre-matric scholarship to the students in their ‘Chuuloo Aasman’ program to the tune of Rs 4 crore.
As per EOW officials, the ‘Vastav India Trust’ registered with Sub-Registrar, Ranchi, Jharkhand, had opened an office at Bomikhal, Bhubaneswar during March, 2022. Under solar awareness programme, they used to collect Rs 1650 in cash from each applicant as member fee with assurance to supply them with LED bulbs.
The survey application form provided by the trust carried the logo of Ministry of MSME, Govt. of India which was forged in order to win the trust of the general public. In their pre-matric scholarship program named “Chuuloo Aasman”, the trust was offering the scholarship of Rs.1,000- per month up to 24 months on their one-time deposit of Rs.3,000 as membership charge.
The scholarship amount was payable to the bank account opened in the name of the parents of the concerned students. In this way, the trust collected approximately Rs 4 crore from more than 3500 people, both public and parents.
During investigation, it was found that Rs 10 lakh was transferred to the account of the arrested accused Nishant Prakash Jaiswal from Vastav India Trust, Rs 11 lakh has been transferred to the account of his wife. Similarly, Rs 4.7 lakh was transferred to the account of arrested accused Amar Danish apart from Vastav India Trust and lakhs of rupees has directly been transferred by the victims to his account, said EOW in a release.
