Bhubaneswar: Project Director held in illegal assets case

Bhubaneswar: The Odisha Vigilance on Friday said it has arrested a senior government officer of the Watershed department and his four associates on corruption charges.

During search operations, the Vigilance department found over Rs 2 crore in cash, deposits worth Rs 91 lakh, gold jewellery weighing 422 grams, four flats and a building from the possession of Santanu Mohapatra, the Deputy Director and the Project Director of the Watershed department in Malkangiri.

Acting on a tip-off, the anti-corruption wing conducted search operations at various locations on Wednesday and Thursday and discovered the properties, the Vigilance department.

Mohapatra’s four associates, including an assistant agriculture engineer and a data entry operator, were also arrested on the charge of embezzlement of government funds.

“The officer and his colleagues are suspected of misappropriating government funds by falsely reporting completed work and making payments to labour accounts, which were then withdrawn and stolen,” a Vigilance official said. It appears that these people had been operating the labourers’ bank accounts to facilitate the withdrawal and misappropriation of government funds.

A day after recovering over Rs 2 crore in cash from the officer of the Watershed department, the Odisha Vigilance department on Thursday launched a separate inquiry into alleged misappropriation of funds by the officer and his associates.

Several passbooks of labourers were also found during searches at the homes of Biswajit Mandal, the data entry operator, and Amiyakanta Sahu, a contractual employee. During the investigation, the anti-corruption wing also found that Alekh Chandra Pradhan, operating a Jan Seva Kendra at Jagannath Prasad in Ganjam district, was acting as a conduit of Mohapatra in bribe collection. Pradhan had transferred more than Rs 1 crore since 2019 till 2024 to Mohapatra, the official said.