Odisha News:In Odisha’s Ganjam district, police have arrested four miscreants for extorting money from trucks going to Andhra Pradesh by pretending to be GST officers. Two cars, five mobile phones and Rs 1.40 lakh in cash have been recovered from them. The police gave this information on Tuesday. The names of the four miscreants are Seemanchal Panda, 58 years, Sushant Kumar Dalai, 35 years, Debasish Patnaik, 30 years and T Gopal Rao, 27 years, respectively.
Police said that on Monday, a truck driver from Andhra Pradesh’s East Godavari district lodged a complaint against them with the police, after which all of them were arrested from Chhatrapur area.
Used to make recovery by calling himself GST officer
The four accused had stopped a truck, which was going from Kolkata to Andhra Pradesh with rice and pan masala. The four extorted Rs 1.40 lakh through fund transfer after identifying the owner of the vehicle as GST officials. The driver alleged that before letting the truck go, they took away 60 packets of pan masala. After this, the truck owner complained against them in the police station, after which all four were arrested.
Sacked IAS sentenced in Odisha
The Special Judge Vigilance Court in Bhubaneswar on Monday sentenced sacked IAS officer Vinod Kumar and five others to three years’ rigorous imprisonment in a case of loan fraud in the Odisha Rural Housing and Development Corporation. All these six accused were convicted under sections 13(2) and 13(1)(d) of the Prevention of Corruption Act and sections 120B, 468 and 471 of the IPC.
A fine of Rs 50,000 was also imposed on all these convicts and it was said that if the convicts fail to pay the fine, then they will have to undergo a further imprisonment of six months for each offence.
Please inform that Vinod Kumar was posted as the Managing Director of ORHDC between January 4, 2000 and May 15, 2001. He had sanctioned a housing loan of 21.35 lakhs to Rashmi Mass Construction on the basis of fake documents. He has already been sentenced five times in corruption cases, this is his sixth sentence.