Tata Motors job fraud: Odisha court frames charges against Gopalpur MLA

Priya Ranjan Swain Published On : Aug 21, 2023 at 10:01 PM

Bhubaneswar: A special court in the Odisha capital here has framed charges against Gopalpur MLA Pradeep Kumar Panigrahy in connection with a job fraud case.

The court also framed charges against Panigrahy’s aide Sarveswar Rao and Akash Pathak, the son of former Odisha cadre Indian Forest Service (IFS) officer Abhay Kant Pathak in connection with the case, sources said.

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The charges were farmed under Sections 419, 420, 467, 468, 469, 471 and 120-B of the IPC and Sections 66-C/66-D of the Information Technology Act-2000 by the JMFC court here, sources said.

The Gopalpur MLA along with Rao and Pathak had allegedly duped several gullible youths of huge sums on promise of providing jobs in Tata Motors.

The case was registered by the Crime Branch on the written report of one Trilochan Mohanty, Deputy General Manager-Ethics of Tata Motors Ltd., Jamshedpur against Akash Pathak for allegedly committing forgery impersonating himself as the MD (I/c), Passenger Division, Tata Motors Ltd. and thereby cheating innocent people in the name of giving job in Tata Motors. It was alleged in the said written report that without any authority accused Akash used the logo of TML and Tata Group and also the brand name of the company and collected money from the gullible job aspirants to provide them service in TML.

During investigation, it was well made out that Pradeep Kumar Panigrahy, Akash Pathak and V. Sarveswar Rao entered into a criminal conspiracy to commit the offence of cheating by creating forged electronic records and documents in the form of E-mails and visiting cards projecting accused Akash Kumar Pathak as MD (I/c) Tata Motors with the purpose to collect huge amount of money from innocent job aspirants on the pretext of providing job in TATA Motors.

The police had arrested the Gopalpur legislator and the other two in connection with the job fraud.

The Gopalpur legislator had filed a discharge petition in the special court soon after he was granted bail in the case.

Panigrahy had approached the Orissa High Court after the special court rejected his discharge petition.

The special court framed charges against Panigrahy and the other two after the HC quashed his discharge plea, sources said.