Did ED Raids On Brother’s NGO Prompt BJD Leader Pramila Mallik To Move Orissa HC For Anticipatory Bail?

Bhubaneswar: Senior BJD leader and Opposition Chief Whip the Assembly Pramila Mallik has reportedly filed a petition in the Orissa High Court seeking anticipatory bail.

While the specific reason for her anticipatory bail application is yet to be ascertained, the move comes barely two months after the Enforcement Directorate (ED) conducted raids in December last year on properties linked to her Khirod Chandra Mallick in Sambalpur and Delhi in connection with an alleged Rs 231 crore financial fraud.

However, it was unclear whether she sought anticipatory bail due to apprehension of possible arrest in connection with the ED raids.

Khirod passed away of heart attack on September 18, 2024. His NGO, Bharat Integrated Social Welfare Agency (BISWA), for defrauding several nationalised banks across Odisha and other states to the tune of Rs 231 crore in 2010. He allegedly mis-utilised loans obtained for the purpose of lending to self-help groups (SHGs) by furnishing the fabricated utilisation certificates, ED sources had said.

Searches were conducted at his residential building, an office of the NGO and another building owned by him in Sambalpur. In Delhi, the raid was conducted at the headquarters of BISWA, sources said.

The CBI registered several fraud cases against Khirod and his organisation in 2020, following which the ED initiated a parallel investigation in 2021.

In October 2019, Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of Mumbai Crime Branch had arrested Khirod and his son Debabrata Mallick in connection with a financial irregularity case registered in Mumbai in 2012. This came five years after his arrest for running an NBFC, which flouted the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) licence norms and collected deposits to the tune of around Rs 10 crore from small investors in the state.

He was arrested on May 24, 2012, for his alleged involvement in an acid attack incident at Mancheswar in Bhubaneswar in October 2011.

Khirod was also partly blamed for Pramila’s ouster as women and child development minister during the Naveen Patnaik regime in the wake of the dal scam in 2011. She had then included her brother in the 20-member state-level midday meal monitoring committee.