Odishatv Bureau

Bhubaneswar: The Vigilance sleuths on Wednesday pasted notice on the rented house of India 24X7 chief news portal head Ravi Sharma for the third time asking him to appear before the probe agency by Thursday.

According to sources, the investigating agency put on the notice on the rented house of Sharma located at Madhusudan Nagar here, after the latter did not turn up before the probe agency despite being served notice for the second time.

Notably, the video footage of the sting operation done by Sharma and cameraman Saroj Kamila was aired on a news channel. The sting showed four MLAs, Anama Nayak, Sushant Behera, Bijay Nayak and Seemarani Nayak, demanding hefty money as bribe from an undercover person posing as an industrialist for giving No Objection Certificate (NOC) and facilitating land acquisition to set up industries in their respective constituencies.

After the news aired on the news channel, chief minister Naveen Patnaik ordered a Vigilance probe into the incident. Following this, the anti corruption wing of the Odisha police had served a notice to Sharma asking him to appear before it on September 4. Later, it served another notice asking him to depose today as he did not pay any heed to the last notice.

Sharma is on the run after a Vigilance team raided his rented house on September 2 in connection with the sting operation.

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