The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of Odisha Crime Branch has arrested two persons on the charges of misappropriating government subsidy of Rs 6.81 crore meant for farmers and other beneficiaries.
The accused have been identified as Manas Ranjan Dash and Tapas Kumar Dash.
Both the accused are brothers and directors of M/s Sheetal Agro Inputs Pvt. Ltd. and Proprietor of M/s Mishita Enterprises located at Purohitpur in Jagatsinghpur district.
M/s Sheetal Agro Inputs Pvt. Ltd, the company of the accused Manas is registered with the Odisha government’s agriculture department under Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) scheme as a manufacturing firm/company of Agro implements like Transplanter machines.
During the financial year 2018-2019 and 2019-2020, Manas in connivance with its eight dealers including M/s Mishita Enterprises had uploaded a series of false/fake invoices in respect of supply/ sale of 504 Transplanters to equal number of farmers/ beneficiaries belonging to 19 districts of Odisha including Jagatsinghpur, Jajpur, Balasore, Khurdha, Kalahandi and Sambalpur and managed to avail subsidy amount of Rs.6,81,53,048 under the DBT scheme, which was disbursed in the bank accounts of concerned beneficiaries/farmers by the Agriculture Department and misappropriated the same.
In a release, the EOW said, out of the total 504 transplanter machines of M/s Sheetal Agro Inputs Pvt. Ltd, 337 Transplanters were shown to have been sold by its dealer M/s Mishita Enterprises, the owner of which is Tapas Kumar Dash, the brother of Manash Ranjan Dash.
The duo received the subsidy amount against those false sales by uploading fake invoices/data/information and UTR in the DBT Portal and misappropriated the subsidy amount.
“Soon after the subsidy amount was credited to the account of beneficiary/ farmer, the accused Manas Ranjan Das and his brother Tapas Ranjan Dash and other dealers used to lure the beneficiary to withdraw the total subsidy amount. They took away major subsidy amount in cash from them by paying some amounts/ cuts to the concerned farmer/ beneficiary,” the EOW added.