Tahasildar, four ex-RIs among six held in Vasundhara land scam in Odisha

Bhubaneswar: The State Vigilance arrested a Tahasildar and five others for their alleged involvement in allotting Government land to ineligible beneficiaries under the Vasundhara scheme.

After registering a case Vigilance Cell P.S. Case No. 4 dated 22.08.2021 U/s 13(2) r/w 13(1)(a) PC Amd. Act, 2018 along with 466/409/120-B IPC, the sleuths conducted simultaneous searches at nine places in Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Bhadrak and Jagatsinghpur associated with the Tahsildar, a retired OAS officer and four former Revenue Inspectors.

Vigilance sources said, earlier in the day, the raids were carried out at houses of OAS Ramesh Chandra Panda, Ex-Tahasildar, Kujang; Mahendra Prasad Mohanty, Retired OAS and Ex- Sub-Collector, Jagatsinghpur; Santosh Kumar Mallick, ex-Revenue Inspector, Jhimani RI Circle; Narendra Kumar Lenka, ex-Revenue Inspector, Paradeep Garh; Subash Chandra Das, ex-Revenue Inspector, Kujanga and Jyoti Bhusan Barik, ex-Revenue Inspector, Pandua Circle.

The sources added Panda, who was a former Tahasildar of Kujang is currently posted as Tahasildar of Tihidi.

As many as nine teams led by one Additional SP, 11 DSPs and six Inspectors participated in the searches.

Panda, Mohanty and the four former RIs have been arrested for criminal misconduct, misappropriation, forgery and criminal conspiracy in illegally settling valuable Government land under the Odisha Government Land Settlement Act in favour of ineligible beneficiaries under the Vasundhara scheme.

Worth mentioning, the Odisha government has launched the Vasundhara scheme to provide land to homesteadless families on free of premium basis.