Reported by Santosh Jagdev
Bhubaneswar, Dec 15:

The CBI, which filed a preliminary charge sheet in the Artha Tatwa (AT) group case on last Thursady, has charged four-time Banki MLA and former president of the Odisha State Cooperative Union, with receiving Rs 42 lakh from the tainted company in return for the patronage he extended to it.

Pravat Tripathy (Pic- Biswaranjan Mishra) Pravat Tripathy
(Pic- Biswaranjan Mishra)

The 233-page charge sheet (9/2014), a copy of which is with OST, holds Tripathy guilty under sections 120-B, 406, 409, 411, 420, 468, 471 of IPC and sections 4, 5 and 6 of the Prize Chits and Money Circulation Schemes (Banning) Act, 1978.

Tripathy, in the capacity of president of Odisha Cooperative Union from 2008 to 2011, had used his clout over the Assistant Registrar of Cooperative Societies to register the cooperative society 'Artha Tatwa Multi-Purpose Cooperative Society Limited' at short notice, the charge sheet said.

During his tenure as the president of the Union, he was also instrumental in conferring Sethy with the Best Youth Cooperator Award instituted by Odisha Cooperative Union without any noteworthy contribution or achievement on the part of the awardee and that too within 15 days of Artha Tatwa Multipurpose Cooeprative Society Limited getting regsitered.

Sethy, the charge sheet said, cashed in on the award to win the confidence of the investors and to lure them into investing money in AT group of companies. This is evident from the statements of the duped investors that they were encouraged to invest their money after showing them the photographs of Sethy receiving the Best Youth Cooperator award, the charge sheet said.

This apart, Tripathy, whose name figures neither in the list of directors nor in the list of employees, had asked Sethy to finance Banki Mahotsav, a local festival.

A taped conversation between the Sethy and Tripathy, in which the latter had sought favours from the former, was found to be genuine after a test at the CBI's Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL), New Delhi, the charge sheet pointed out.