Bhubaneswar: The state government has recommended the Income Tax department to investigate the ‘benami’ transaction made by Odisha Infra Tech Private Limited during purchase of land in Sarua.
Additional Director General (ADG) of Police (crime branch), Soumendra Priyadarshi said, “State police have no authority to investigate benami transactions. So we requested Income Tax Department to probe.”
During inquiry, the EOW has found that Odisha Infra Tech Pvt Ltd, of which Baijayant Panda and Jagi Mangat Panda are major shareholders and promoters, purchased land belonging to scheduled caste persons circumventing rules by forgery and other methods with an intension to cause losses to SC people.
The Revenue and Disaster Management department had earlier asked for criminal investigation into sale of rayati land belonging to the Scheduled Caste persons in Begunia tehsil in favour of Odisha lnfra Tech Pvt Limited through ‘Benami’ transaction through Rabindra Kumar Sethy, former driver of ORTEL.
“We went through the bank account details of Sethy and found that no money was credited in his account. So the state government has recommended the IT department to conduct investigation into the benami transaction,” said Priyadarshi.
Welcoming the decision of Crime Branch to hand over Sarua land probe to Income Tax department, OTV said it had earlier maintained that the investigation was not under the purview of state police but many fake cases were filed to harass OTV and OIPL.
