Bhubaneswar: The Odisha Vigilance on Thursday arrested two former officials of Tirtol Block office in Jagatsinghpur district for allegedly embezzling over Rs 3 crore government funds.
Bhanja Kishore Behera, former Senior Revenue Assistant (SRA) of Tirtol Block and currently posted as SRA at Naugaon Tehsil, and Pradipta Kumar Mallik, former Panchayat Executive Officer (PEO) of Tirtol Block (now retired), were taken into custody in connection with the misappropriation of Rs 3,02,95,000.
According to a Vigilance release, the arrests followed an investigation, covering the financial years 2011-12 to 2021-22, which revealed a systematic fraud at the Tirtol Block office involving Behera, Mallik and the late Rajdeep Hansda, former Assistant Executive Engineer of the same block. The trio allegedly fabricated and tampered with government salary registers and disbursal documents. They prepared and submitted inflated and fraudulent salary bills that far exceeded the sanctioned budget allocations and then transferred the embezzled amounts directly into their personal savings bank accounts.
Odisha Vigilance has registered a case against the accused under Section 13(2) read with Section 13(1)(a) of the Prevention of Corruption (Amendment) Act, 2018, along with Sections 409, 420, 467, 468, 471 and 34 of the Indian Penal Code. Behera and Mallik will be produced before the Court of the Special Judge, Vigilance, Kataka, even as further investigation continues, it added.
