Vigilance Raids Tainted IAS Officer’s House Again, Seizes Documents

Bhubaneswar: A five-member team of the Vigilance Cell on Thursday raided the official residence of senior IAS officer Binod Kumar at VIP Colony in IRC Village here and seized some documents.

The raid was conducted in connection with the complicity of the IAS officer in the financial irregularities during his tenure as managing director of Odisha Rural Housing Development Corporation.

The anti-corruption officials had gone to Kumar’s house on Wednesday after the  Special Vigilance Court issued a non-bailable arrest warrant againt him for ignoring its summon notice. They, however, found the house locked.

“This is the third time that the Vigilance has raided the house of Kumar. We had gone to his residence to arrest him by the order of the court. If we fail to trace him, we will inform the court. The court will then declare him ‘absconder’ after which we will initiate the process of attaching his property,” Vigilance DSP Nirmal Mohanty told mediapersons.

Mohanty also informed that along with Kumar, the houses of the five other employees of ORHDC who were convicted by the court, are also being raided simultaneously.

It may be mentioned here that the Vigilance Directorate had registered a case against Kumar and five other employees of the ORHDC in 2000 for their involvement in the financial irregularities to the tune of Rs 55 lakh in the construction of cyclone shelters after the Super Cyclone in October 1999.

The court, after hearing the case, had convicted Kumar and the five employees of the Corporation, Sanjay Mohanty, Purna Chandra Das, Pradip Kumar Rout, Chitta Ranjan Mohanty and Ashish Kumar Nayak.

Barring Sanjay Mohanty, the five others including Kumar, did not appear before the court on Wednesday. Following the violation of its directive, the court had issued non-bailable arrest warrant against them.

Efforts are on to trace the five convicts including the IAS officer, Vigilance sources said.