Bhubaneswar: The CBI on Thursday raided the properties of industrialist Mahimananda Mishra, including his house and office in different locations in Cuttack and Paradip.
According to sources, searches are on at Odia Bazaar in Cuttack and Odisha Stevedores Limited offices at Link Road and Badapadi at Paradip for more than 2 hours by the CBI teams.
There is still no clarity yet on why the raids are being conducted. Reports, however, suggest that it could be related to some alleged irregularities in Paradip Port Trust, whose officials are also being questioned.
Sources further said that CBI sleuths quizzed Chief Mechanical Engineer of Paradip Port Saroj Kumar Das and a contractor Sumant Rout at The 100 Millions (guest house of the port) in connection with a bribery case. The senior official had allegedly accepted bribe from the contractor. While Rs 80 lakh was seized from the office of the engineer, another Rs 50 lakh was seized from the contractor.
The CBI team also checked some documents at Mishra’s Cuttack office and questioned him in this regard, the sources added.
Notably, the industrialist was granted bail from Orissa High Court in November 2019 in connection with the murder of Mahendra Swain, an executive of Hyderabad-based stevedoring company Seaways Shipping and Logistics Limited. He is accused of hiring killers to eliminate him.
He was arrested by Thailand’s Immigration Police in Bangkok on December 25, 2016. According to the Bangkok Post, Mishra along with some of his family members and a handful of security guards had entered Thailand on a tourist visa from Nepal. Odisha police too had confirmed that Mishra and his aide Basant Bal had escaped to Kathmandu on a 15-day tourist visa after hiding at several places in the country following Swain’s murder.
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