Bhubaneswar: The Odisha Vigilance sleuths on Tuesday apprehended Mahakalapada Tehsildar, Siba Mallick, while accepting a bribe of Rs 20,000 for removing illegal structures from a government land.
According to a Vigilance release, the OAS officer had demanded the illega
l gratification from the complainant since the illegal structure obstructed the passage to his house.
The complainant had filed a case in 2024 and subsequent inquiry by the RI concerned confirmed forcible encroachment of government land by some miscreants blocking the common road. Following which, he met Mallick, the competent authority to evict illegal encroachment, on several occasions requesting for help in removing the illegal structures blocking his access. However, the officer demanded Rs 20,000 as bribe and threatened to keep the matter pending for a year.
Left with no other option, he. reported the matter to Vigilance authorities, who laid a trap and nabbed Mallick from the rest room inside Tehsil office in Odisha’s Kendrapada district while accepting Rs 20,000. The bribe money was recovered from him and seized.
Simultaneous searches are underway at six locations linked to the OAS officer to ascertain whether he has accumulated assets disproportionate to his known sources of income, it added.
This comes almost 10 days after Bamra Tehsildar Aswini Kumar Panda, who topped the Odisha Civil Services Examination in 2019, was arrested for allegedly taking a bribe of Rs 15,000 to convert kisam of a land in a mutation case.