Bhubaneswar: IAS officer Bishnupada Sethi resigned from his service following raid conducted by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) at his residence in connection with a bribery case. 

The 1995-batch Odisha-cadre IAS officer tendered his resignation to the state government citing 'as a mark of protest'. 

A team CBI comprising eight official today searched the residence of Sethi, who is currently placed as an Officer on Special Duty (OSD) in the General Administration and Public Grievance department of Odisha Government, for his alleged involevemnt in Rs 10-lakh cash seizure case. 

The CBI team entered my house and doing searches in several places including where my daughter is studying. I have lost the name and fame earned so far, the bureaucrat alleged in his resignation letter stressing that there is no FIR against him and he is nowhere related to the bribery case. 

Playing dalit card as part of his defense, he said that he faced great difficult situaion as he belongs to SC community. 

The senior bureaucrat was dragged into controversy over the CBI probe into 'tender fixing' involving Bridge and Roof Company (India) Limited. 

He was summoned by the CBI for interrogation in an ongoing invstigation against Aditya Dev Infratech Pvt Ltd owner Debadatta Mahapatra, who was arrested along with two others following a raid in Bhubaneswar on December 7 evening. 

Along with Mahapatra, the CBI arrested Bridge and Roof Co. (India) Ltd's Group General Manager Chanchal Mukherjee and Penta A Studio Private Ltd's Director Santosh Moharana as part of its probe into the seizure of huge cash and gold from a luxury car near the Mayfair Hotel in Bhubaneswar on December 7. 

As per the reports, the CBI caught Debadutta Mohapatra and Santosh Moharana while the duo was offering Rs 10 lakh cash and gold jewelleries as bribe to Chanchal Mukherjee to influence the officials of Bridge and Roof Company for a tender. 

Following the summon, the state government acted swiftly against Sethi and shifted him from three key posts -- Principal Secretary to the state government's Social Security & Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities Department, ST & SC Development, Minorities, and Backward Classes Welfare Department and Commissioner-Cum-Secretary in Odia Language Literature & Culture Department - he was assigned earlier.