Bhubaneswar: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has registered a case against three officials of the Income Tax department in Khurda on charges of demanding bribes from a farmer seeking to resolve a duplicate PAN card issue.
The accused are I-T inspector T Satyanarayan Rao, clerk Bhimsen Barik and data entry operator Kumar Samaresh.
According to sources, Subash Chandra Sahoo, a 48-year-old farmer from Panchagaon under the Airfield police limits in Bhubaneswar, approached the Khurda I-T office after encountering a problem with his PAN card. His original PAN, linked to his bank account and Aadhaar, had a spelling error in his father’s name. Instead of seeking a simple correction, he mistakenly applied for a new PAN card. Bank officials later advised him to deactivate the duplicate/old PAN and link the new one to his account, which had been blocked due to the mismatch.
When he visited the I-T office on March 19, Samaresh introduced him to Barik, who allegedly demanded Rs 2,000 to process the deactivation. When Sahoo refused, he was taken to Rao, who reportedly raised the demand to Rs 10,000 and threatened to halt or reject the application if the bribe was not paid.
Sahoo lodged a formal complaint with the CBI on Tuesday. CBI officials verified the allegations in the presence of independent witnesses and found prima facie evidence that the officials had demanded illegal gratification of Rs 10,000 for deleting/deactivating the duplicate PAN from the Income Tax database.
The agency registered the case, citing offences under Section 61(2) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, and Section 7 of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 (as amended in 2018).
The trio has been asked to provide explanations as the probe continues. No arrests or raids have been reported so far.
