Odisha IAS officer Bijay Ketan Upadhyay granted bail in bribery case

Cuttack: In a huge relief for IAS officer Bijay Ketan Upadhyay, Orissa High Court today granted him bail in a bribery case.

The court said that the bail condition of the bureaucrat will be decided by the lower court.

Upadhyay was arrested by Vigilance on the charges of demanding bribe amount of Rs 1 lakh from a company. He had moved the High Court on Jan 14 after his bail application was rejected by a Special Vigilance Court.

The 2009-batch Odisha cadre IAS officer was serving as the Director of Horticulture Department in the state. He is accused of receiving bribe from a company through Santosh Kumar Pattanayak, relationship manager of a private bank in Bapuji Nagar area here, who was allegedly acting as a conduit.

Vigilance sleuths had caught the banker red-handed when he was accepting the bribe on the behalf of Upadhyay for releasing the firm’s bill of Rs 50 lakh.

The anti-corruption wing arrested him and the banker on December 30 last year following which the IAS officer was placed under suspension.

During course of investigation, it was revealed that Upadhyay had deposited huge cash in different banks in the last seven years. The Vigilance sources said that the cash of around Rs 70 lakh was credited at his accounts in three different banks between 2012 and 2019. The deposits were made both in counters and through cash accepting machines. Of total cash deposits, around Rs 22 lakh was deposited during his tenure as the Director of Horticulture.