Odisha Sun Times Bureau
Bhubaneswar, July 3:

The Crime Branch sleuths of Odisha police have arrested Dr. Motilal Gouda in connection with the Rs 88 lakh health check-up scam, police sources said today.

Motilal Gouda

The accused—the former Assistant Director in Directorate of Factories and Boilers—has been arrested by the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Crime Branch from outside Odisha.

"A case was registered with the EOW of Crime Branch on June 6 in connection with forgery, cheating, criminal conspiracy, causing disappearance of evidence. Motilal Gouda, along with his accomplices, had conspired to falsify the gazette notification causing financial loss to the government. He was responsible for wrongful gains to specific private firms. Besides, he had entered his room to manipulate the computer to destroy evidence and taken some documents. We had arrested three persons including a middleman and two pathology unit owners after we took over the probe. After his anticipatory bail plea was rejected, he was hiding at various places in Odisha and then moved to Andhra Pradesh. A team was camping in Visakhapatnam-Vizianagaram area since last four days. We tracked him based on various inputs and arrested him. Our special team is in transit. They will reach tomorrow after which he will be produced before the court. We will seek for remand to probe further into the matter and his linkages,” Crime Branch Special DG BK Sharma said.

A four-member team headed by IG Arun Bothra was formed to nab him for his alleged complicity in the scam in which he had empanelled pathology units for health check-ups with the help of forged gazette notification. He had allegedly signed a contract worth Rs 63 lakh with Navaratna PSU Nalco and was in the process of signing another worth Rs 1.02 crore when the irregularities came to the fore. Following this, the state government suspended him and ordered a Crime Branch (CB) inquiry into the alleged irregularities.

The arrest comes a day after Vigilance sleuths conducted simultaneous raids at five places in Odisha-- including his house at Chandipur under Mohana block in Gajapati district, the official quarters in the capital city, his clinic in Bhubaneswar, pathology units in Cuttack and Talcher.

The sleuths unearthed Gouda’s movable and immovable properties to the tune of nearly Rs 60 lakh.

Gouda went incommunicado ever since his anticipatory bail plea was rejected by the Orissa High Court on July 24.

It may be mentioned here that Opposition parties had targeted the ruling party after photographs of the accused with the members of the BJD surfaced in the media. The Opposition parties accused the government of shielding the accused.