Bail plea of Odisha IAS officer arrested in bribery case rejected

Bhubaneswar: The Special Vigilance Court today rejected a bail plea moved by IAS officer Bijay Ketan Upadhyaya, who has been arrested in a bribery case. Also the court sent him to the Vigilance remand for 14 days for further investigation.

Bijay Ketan was produced before the court through video conferencing. After hearing the arguments from counsels of both the parties, the court rejected the IAS officer’s bail petition.

Earlier, the court had sent Bijay Ketan to a Vigilance remand till January 5 following his arrest on December 30.

Notably, the bureaucrat is accused of demanding a bribe of Rs one lakh from a company through Santosh Kumar Pattanayak, relationship manager of Yes Bank, Bapuji Nagar branch, who was allegedly acting as a conduit. Vigilance sleuths had caught the bank official red-handed when he was accepting the bribe on the behalf of the IAS officer for releasing the firm’s bill of Rs 50 lakh.

Bijay Ketan, former Director of Horticulture, was suspended by the Odisha Government following his arrest.