Odisha chit fund scam: CBI gets ex AT director Jagabandhu Panda on 9-day remand

Reported by Santosh Jagdev
Bhubaneswar, Dec 11:

The special CBI court here today allowed the CBI to take Jagabandhu Panda, former director of Artha Tatwa (AT) Group, a major player in the Odisha chit fund scam, on a nine-day remand beginning tomorrow.

file pic
file pic

The remand plea filed by senior counsel KC Mishra on behalf of the CBI had sought a 14-day remand of Panda for interrogation in connection with the dubious dealings of the company.

Commissionerate Police had arrested Panda on May 28 last year in connection with the Rs 500- crore financial scam perpetrated by the company.

Panda, a resident of Balasore who had joined AT Group in 2008, allegedly embezzled nearly Rs 100 crore from the company before floating another money circulation company named Swastik India along with some former AT Group employees in 2011.

The CBI had also moved the court to take another director of the AT Group Manoj Pattnaik on a 14-day remand on December 9, the same day it moved the court to take Panda on remand. Though the hearing on CBI’s remand plea for Patnaik too was scheduled for today, it could not be taken up.

Pattnaik, who had been handling the AT Group’s gold trading business, had been arrested by the police in connection with the company’s financial fraud on May 31 last year.

Pattnaik, who at the time had managed to get an anticipatory bail in connection with a cheating case in AT Group, was arrested after police slapped a second case against him, relating to fraud in gold trading by the company.

He had reportedly embezzled nearly Rs 4 crore, CBI sources said.

Both Panda and Pattnaik are now lodged in Jharpada jail in the city.

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