Bhubaneswar: Director of a Delhi-based company Gopal Satpathy has been arrested for allegedly posing as Union Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw’s PA and influencing postings and transfers. He had also coerced senior railway officials into purchasing medicines from a particular firm.
A special team of Twin City Commissionrate Police nabbed him from New Delhi on Thursday and later brought him to Odisha. “East Coast Railway officials had lodged two complaints against him at the Chandrasekharpur police station in Bhubaneswar. He has been booked under Section 419 of the IPC,” DCP Bhubaneswar Umashankar Dash.
According to police sources, Satpathy had instructed his employee, Samarth Vishwakarma, to impersonate Vaishnaw’s PA to get the transfer of section engineer PK Panigrahi cancelled. Several calls were made to ECoR General Manager Vidya Bhushan in this regard this month.
Vishwakarma was nabbed from Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh on July 23 after railway officials verified his claim and came to know the Union Minister had not appointed any such person as his personal assistant.
He later admitted to having posed as the Minister’s PA on Satapathy’s instruction.
Satapathy is the director of Snowbell Tradelinks Private Limited. His firm deals with health and medical products, housekeeping material and other items. He had also applied for a tender to supply medical items to ECoR.
A native of Khaira in Balasore district, Satpathy claims to be BJP’s Saha Prabhari of Kisan Morcha in Andaman and Nicobar on his social media account.
