‘Land Scam’: Former Odisha DGP Sanjeev Marik Threatens Defamation Suit Against Nageswara Rao

Bhubaneswar: Former Odisha DGP Sanjeev Marik has threatened to file a defamation suit against retired IPS officer M Nageswara Rao for dragging his name in an alleged government land scam in Bhubaneswar.

He accused Rao of peddling lies. “He mentioned that he had filed a complaint on November 5, 2015, to the superintendent of police, economics offence wing, and accused me of suppressing the matter. The fact is I was transferred on November 8 and retired from service a month later. The EOW had received the complaint and given an acknowledgement too,” he claimed.

Marik questioned as to why he did not follow-up the complaint. “I got to know from the EOW that the person against whom he had lodged the complaint had deposed before it and the inquiry was closed thereafter,” he said, adding that perhaps there was no truth in the allegation and the intention was to claim Rs 1 crore after 3 years against Rs 9 lakh at which the land was purchased.

He further informed that Meenakshi Jena from whom he bought the land had also made a deed agreement for compromise, stating that the payment had been made with interest and Rao can no longer make claims over the land.

Marik further said that he suspect that these baseless allegations are aimed at settling an old score. “When I was ADG (Operations), he was the IG of the CRPF. At that time, a deputy commandant was killed in a Maoist attack for wrongful deployment of CRPF. He had then tried to put the blame on me, following which I wrote a letter to the government. Rao was then sent back prematurely to Odisha,” he said.

He added his son had purchased land for Rs 3 lakh after verifying the documents.

Rao, the former Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) director, raised the issue after the reply to an RTI query revealed that a land, measuring around 7.5 acre, on government plot 321 under Patrapada Mouza and situated alongside the National Highway 16 (Kolkata to Chennai) had been sold and purchased at least 27 times.

He claimed in a post on X handle that he was also the victim of the fraud in which government land was sold by land mafia in cahoots with powerful people. “I was a victim of a fraud committed by Nrusinga Prasad Sudaray alias Babino in cahoots with powerful people in which they fraudulently sold government land which they encroached by creating forged documents and the sale deed was registered with Sub-Registrar Office Bhubaneswar.”

He also maintained that he had reported all these things in his annual property returns submitted to the Odisha government and central government.

Rao further stated he had filed a complaint on November 5, 2015, to the superintendent of police, economics offence wing, when Marik was the DGP. “But I am ashamed to inform that being a senior IPS officer of Odisha and inspite of my efforts, I failed to get the FIR registered as powerful people were involved. Later a civil suit no 9211/2015 was filed before the court of Additional Civil Judge, Senior Division, Bhubaneswar but I did not get any relief as powerful people are involved in it,” he said in the post.

He added: “Totally exhausted and finding no way to get justice and in view of the impending marriage of my daughter for which I needed money, I agreed for deed cancellation which was registered in 4th June in the SRO Khandagiri, Bhubaneswar and my money was returned.”