Disgraced Odisha DSP Pramod Panda suspended at last

Odisha Sun Times Bureau
Bhubaneswar, Jan 1:

It was a New Year gift disgraced Odisha police officer Pramod Panda could have done without. Thirteen days after he was arrested by the CBI for his links with chit fund scam kingpin Pradeep Sethy, the Odisha government today suspended the police officer with retrospective effect from the day he was arrested.

Questions had been raised by various quarters, inlcuding petitioner Alok Jena whose PIL led to the Supreme Court ordering a CBI probe into the scam, on the refusal of the Odisha government to suspend Panda. As per rules, a government employee is supposed to be suspended within 48 hours of his or her arrest in a criminal case, they had pointed out.

There were allegations that powerful circles in the state police were trying to shield the former Crime Branch DSP, who had ‘investigated’ several chit fund cases.

Panda was arrested by the CBI on December 19 on charges of larger conspiracy and deriving undue financial benefits from the AT group. He is the first Odisha police officer to be arrested in the case. He was posted as DSP, district intelligence bureau (DIB), Nayagarh at the time of his arrest.

The special CBI court here on December 24 denied him bail at the end of his five day  CBI remand. The court had ordered his production before it on January 1. He is presently lodged at the Jharpada jail here.

During the course of its investigation, the CBI had stumbled upon evidence of his complicity with the chit fund scam accused and AT group chief Pardeep Sethy. During a raid at his Bhadrak residence on November 18, the central agency had seized some crucial documents that pointed to financial transactions between him and the AT group.

The CBI had got tell tale evidence of transfer of huge amounts of money from the AT group to a computer centre named ZICA run by Panda’s wife Gitanjali, sources in the agency said.