Odisha Vigilance Arrests OBCC Engineer With 45 Plots, 1Kg Gold & Assets Worth Crores

Bhubaneswar: The Odisha Vigilance on Tuesday arrested Additional Engineer of Odisha Bridge and Construction Corporation (OBCC) Pradeep Kumar Rath for allegedly amassing assets worth crores of rupees disproportionate to his known sources of income.

A whopping 45 plots, 1 kg gold and other assets worth crores were unearthed during simultaneous searches at 12 locations on Monday.

According to a Vigilance release, he was found in possession of two multi-storey buildings, two high-value flats in Bhubaneswar, 45 plots, including three in Dhenkanal worth Rs 1 crore, one medicine store, a crusher unit, 1 kg gold, deposits to the tune of Rs 1.62 crore, two four-wheeler, as many JCBs, a excavator, a rock breaker, which he could not account for satisfactorily.

Rath and his family members own a three-storey building spread over 6,660 sqft at Satya Vihar, one building having a medicine store at Nayapalli and two flats in the state capital. Another three-storey building spread over 7,000 sqft was found in Bhadrak. He owns plots in Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Dhenkanal, Bhadrak and Jajpur. Silver ornaments weighing 300 gm, fixed deposits in banks, post offices amounting to Rs 88 lakh and investment in insurance policies to the tune of Rs 50 lakh were also detected.

Rath also owns a crusher unit in Dhenkanal.

A case has been registered against him and further investigation is underway, it added.