Bhubaneswar: Three government employees were apprehended during a simultaneous Odisha Vigilance operation in Sambalpur, Mayurbhanj and Nayagarh districts of Odisha on Friday.
Those arrested are Bamra Tehsildar Aswini Kumar Panda, an OAS officer, Nayagarh District Labour Officer (DLO) Chittaranjan Rout, and former PEO of Luhasila GP under Bijatola block Puspita Mahakud.
According to a Vigilance release, the OAS officer was apprehended while allegedly accepting a bribe of Rs 15,000 for conversion of agricultural land to homestead land in a mutation case. He initially demanded Rs 20,000 and brought it down to Rs 15,000 when the complainant expressed his inability to pay the large sum. A trap was laid after the complainant approached the Vigilance authorities and P Praveen Kumar, the office driver of the Tehsildar, was caught red-handed accepting the bribe money on his behalf.
Simultaneous searches are currently underway at three locations linked to Panda to ascertain whether he has accumulated assets disproportionate to his known sources of income.
In Nayagarh, Rout was caught while accepting Rs 6,000 from a labourer. He had sought the bribe to issue labour cards to 20 labourers, leading to a delay of nearly a year. The entire tainted bribe money has been recovered and seized from the DLO.
The release said Rout was under the Vigilance scanner following repeated bribery allegations. Simultaneous searches are currently underway at three locations linked to him to ascertain whether he has accumulated assets disproportionate to his known sources of income.
Mahakud, who was attached to the office of Rairangpur Sub-Collector in Mayurbhanj was nabbed for embezzling government funds to the tune of Rs 5,68,950 meant for distribution to senior citizens under the Old Age Pension scheme.