Man arrested in Odisha capital for duping Keonjhar businessman

Reported by Santosh Jagdev

Bhubaneswar, Aug 23:

Commissionerate Police today arrested a person for allegedly cheating a managing director (MD) of a mineral company based in Keonjhar in northern Odisha.

The accused, identified as Niranjan Mallick, was the owner of a city-based hotel who had taken Rs 9.75 crore as advance from the MD of Keonjhar based Priti Pragyan Minerals Pvt Ltd Babish Prusty to sell his sponge iron company named Aditya Sponge and Power Private Limited located at Keonjhar vide an agreement the two of them signed in 2008. The agreement had put the total cost of the unit at Rs 29 crore.

But later, Prusty found that the ownership of plant was not with Mallick. The latter had fraudulently made one of his employees Niranjan Pradhan the managing director of the company and had struck the deal to sell his sponge iron unit.

Mallick neither handed over the unit nor return the money he had taken from Prusty.

After failing to get his advance money despite repeated calls to Mallick, Prusty lodged a complaint in October last year. Acting on the complaint, Nayapalli police registered a case and had launched a manhunt to nab the accused.

Today police arrested Mallick and are interrogating him to ascertain other facts related to the case.