Odisha EOW Arrests Another Accused In Rs 6.81 Cr Fraud Case

The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Odisha crime branch has arrested Chandan Sahoo, another accused in Rs 6.81 crore fraud case, officials said on Wednesday.

Earlier, Manas Ranjan Dash, director of Sheetal Agro Inputs Pvt. Ltd. and his brother Tapas Kumar Dash were arrested in this case. The accused were arrested for allegedly misappropriating government subsidies of Rs 6.81 crore meant for the supply of 504 transplanters to farmers.

Chandan Sahoo, proprietor of CS Technologies has been arrested from Bhubaneswar and is being forwarded to the court of SDJM, Jagatsinghpur on Wednesday, the officials said.

The EOW officials said that the arrested accused, Chandan was working as a dealer of Sheetal Agro Inputs Pvt. Ltd., having its office at Purohitpur in Jagatsinghpur district.

During the financial year 2018-2019 & 2019-2020, Manas, in active connivance with its eight dealers including Chandan, has uploaded a series of fake invoices and data in respect of the supply of 504 transplanters to an equal number of farmers of 19 districts of Odisha and managed to avail subsidy amount of Rs 6,81,53,048 under Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) scheme, they said.

Out of the 504 transplanters, the accused Chandan has shown false sale of 31 transplanters in the name of different farmers/beneficiaries of Puri district. In the entire process, any transplanter was neither manufactured nor sold but subsidy was availed by the beneficiaries.

The EOW has seized a laptop of the accused that was used in uploading fake documents of beneficiaries. Further investigation is going on to nab other persons involved in the fraud case, informed the officials.