The Economic Offences Wing of the Odisha police arrested two people on Friday on charges of cheating over ₹1 crore from a Delhi based businessman by posing as an IAS officer and an engineer with the public works department (PWD) of the Odisha government.
EOW officials said the duo, along with one more person, cheated Mukesh Jain, the proprietor of Rashtriya Stainless Steel, in New Delhi in 2018 of ₹1.17 crore with a promise of high-value work contracts from the PWD department.
EOW deputy inspector general JN Pankaj said they have arrested Suryamani Tripathy, a clerk in the office of the Directorate of Technical Education & Training, and one Amit Kumar.
EOW officials said that Jain had initially come in contact with one Rajesh Gahlot who introduced himself as an officer of RAW having connections with several IAS officers in Odisha.
In 2017, Gahlot introduced Jain and his son to Suryamani by identifying himself as an additional secretary in the PWD department.
“The businessman and his son were promised high-value government contracts/work orders under Pradhan Mantri Yojana in Odisha. In 2018, Suryamani called them to the office of the PWD engineer-in-chief in Bhubaneswar to execute the agreement. Later, Suryamani introduced them to Amit as an engineer with PWD,” EOW officials said.
The accused used Odisha Niwas in New Delhi to strike a deal and gain the trust of the victims.
{{/usCountry}}The accused used Odisha Niwas in New Delhi to strike a deal and gain the trust of the victims.
{{/usCountry}}They also saved the mobile phone numbers of senior IAS, IPS, OAS officers and Judges on their phones to impress people, the EOW officials said.
“The accused, Suryamani, handed over two work orders to the complainant, purportedly issued by the assistant engineer in PWD (Civil) for a contract value of over ₹80 crore and asked Jain to pay money on the pretext of expediting the process,” the EOW officials said.
The EOW officials said that Jain started to have doubts when a no work order was issued and an RTI was sought about the accused persons. Later, on finding that all documents, including treasury receipts, were fake, he registered a case in connection with the fraud. Gahlot is yet to be arrested.
“Several fake orders, agreements, treasury receipts have been seized and it is suspected that the accused might have cheated other persons also,” said EOW SP Dilip Tripathy.