Odisha Sun Times Bureau
Bhubaneswar, July 11:
A local court in Odisha capital today allowed the Crime Branch to take Dr. Motilal Gouda on a further four-day remand to interrogate him for his complicity in the fake gazette notification scam.
Khurda District and Sessions Judge court allowed the Crime Branch to take Motilal on four-day remand against the prayer of seven-day remand application.
The investigators had produced the former assistant director of Directorate of Factories and Boilers before the court after the expiry of the first phase remand of six days today.
Notably, Gouda was arrested by the Economic Offences Wing of Crime Branch from Vizianagaram in Andhra Pradesh on July 3.
On June 6, EOW had filed a case against Gouda and his accomplices in connection with forgery, cheating, criminal conspiracy, causing disappearance of evidence to falsify the gazette notification causing financial loss to the government.
Gouda went incommunicado ever since his anticipatory bail plea was rejected by the Orissa High Court on July 24.
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.