Bhubaneswar: The Odisha Vigilance on Tuesday arrested divisional forest officer (DFO) of Keonjhar Kendu Leaf division, Nityananda Nayak, for allegedly accumulating assets disproportionate to his known sources of income.
During the raids, which began at seven places, including Nayak’s parental house at Madanmohan Patna in Angul, government quarters in Keonjhar and residence of his son at Komanda in Nayagarh, on Sunday, one four-storey building, a farmhouse and 115 valuable plots, a collection of teak artefacts, gold weighing 200 gram, Rs 10.25 lakh in cash, and deposits over Rs 50.38 lakh were detected.
The anti-corruption wing unearthed the farmhouse over 1.50 decimal area at Chhendipada in Angul on Tuesday. It included an outhouse over 1432 sqft area, another house over 314 sqft area, a pond over 0.40 decimal land excavated at a cost of around Rs 30 lakh, two bore wells, one well, and plantation of hundreds of coconut, banana and mango trees. “The Vigilance officials found a diary at his government quarters at Keonjhar, detailing payments and expenditure in setting up the farmhouse. Following this, another Vigilance team along with Technical members traced the location and is now conducting evaluation and assessment of the asset,” an official release said.
It further stated that he was arrested after failing to satisfactorily explain the sources of these assets.
Notably, Nayak had amassed 115 plots in his and his family member’s name over a period of two decades. This is the highest number of land holdings detected by the agency in the name of any government officer and his/her family till now. The previous record of 105 plots in a disproportionate case was held by the chief construction engineer of Anandpur barrage project in Keonjhar, Pravas Kumar Pradhan.
The actual value of these land holdings is likely to be more than Rs 10 crore.
Nayak joined government service as a Range Officer in 1992 and rose through the ranks to become DFO of the Kendu Leaf Division in in 2024