E-Paper
Behind the con: How three men ‘sold’ a govt hotel in Puri
The hotel, though now dilapidated, is located on the Blue Flag beach of Puri, next to the Raj Bhawan
For years, Tapan Mohanty dreamed that he would one day own the ITDC Nilachal Ashok Hotel in Puri, a mere 4km from his home.
For a decade, he prepared himself for it, leasing a lodge in the city, buying land for a hotel on the Puri-Konark highway, and dabbling in real estate. Then came the opportunity. In February 2020, Mohanty executed an agreement between his poultry company and “ITDC” for the sale of the hotel for ₹12 crore, which is to be disinvested as part of the Government of India’s national monetisation pipeline.
A year-and-a-half later, Mohanty is debilitated, by a speech infirmity brought on by a stroke and three surgeries between December and February, and the knowledge that he was the victim of an ingenious, elaborate con, only just being unraveled by the Odisha Police. It’s a con that has cost him ₹50 lakh, and his dream.
ITDC Nilachal Ashok, which Mohanty sought to acquire from Utkal Ashok Hotel Corporation, a joint venture of ITDC and OTDC, was set up in January 1989 after the state government granted it a lease for 99 years over the land where it sits. The hotel, though now dilapidated, is located on the Blue Flag beach of Puri, next to the Raj Bhawan. In 2004, the hotel was closed down as it was found unviable. Utkal Ashok Hotel Corporation then decided to lease out the hotel for a period of 40 years in 2005-06, but there were no bidders. In 2009, it was re-tendered, and a Kolkata-based company, AFR Paulmech Infrastructure Pvt Ltd, won the bid, but allegedly defaulted on its deposit payments and the lease agreement could not be executed. In 2013, the board of directors of Utkal Ashok Hotel Corporation decided to terminate the agreement, following which AFR Paulmech Infrastructure filed a writ petition before the Orissa high court in October 2013. In 2017, the Orissa high court dismissed the writ petition following which the company approached the Supreme Court, where the case is still pending.
The hotel is among the eight ITDC properties that have been listed for monetisation in the National Monetisation Pipeline released by Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman in August.
The man and the con
Mohanty grew up in Puri, and began his business enterprise, TK Egg and Chicken Centre, shortly after the 1999 Super Cyclone. Over two decades, the business grew to a formidable size, supplying eggs and broiler chicken to as many as 70 centres in Odisha, with the money allowing Mohanty to dabble in real estate. Yet his heart had always been set on owning a hotel. In 2015, he took a small lodge in Puri on lease, but it has not yet taken off, its interior decoration still incomplete. Even before that, in 2011, he purchased 1.2 acre land on the Puri-Konark marine drive, where he intended to build a resort. That land is lying fallow.
In December 2019, an acquaintance of Mohanty, who worked with the Life Insurance Coporation of India (LIC), set up a meeting between him and three people for the proposed sale. The roles were well defined: 30- year-old Anikesh Sahu was the contractor who executed different projects of ITDC; Chandan Akash Mohanty, 32, posed as an ITDC official; a third person, yet to be named by the police, accompanied them as a clerk. Mohanty, perhaps blinded by desire, sensed nothing wrong, and fell hard for the con.
On February 29, 2020, Mohanty signed an agreement on behalf of his company “TK Chicken and Egg Centre” titled “Expression of interest and qualification of the company” printed on non-judicial stamp papers of ₹90. Chandan Akash Mohanty signed the document on behalf of “ITDC”.
“We confirm that our consortium/joint venture satisfies the eligibility criteria including the guidelines for qualification of bidders seeking to acquire the public sector enterprise through the process of disinvestment issued by the government of India vide Department of Disinvestment,” the agreement read. Even in this agreement, there were red flags. The Department of Disinvestment was renamed the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (Dipam) on April 14, 2016.
EOW officials said the trio made Mohanty deposit ₹20 lakh into ITDC’s SBI account in Delhi’s Lodhi Road branch on February 29. “As the final deal was not yet through, the three told Mohanty that he needed to pay another ₹30 lakh to process the agreement with different sections of ITDC before the hotel was finally sold [to him] for ₹12 crore. They even told Mohanty that he needed to pay a bribe of ₹3 crore for pushing the final sale through the bureaucracy of ITDC,” said Dilip Tripathy, superintendent of police of Economic Offences Wing.
The confirmation from ITDC, of course, never came. “Mohanty paid ₹30 lakh in cash over a period of time to push his bid for the hotel deal,” said Tripathy.
While investigations are still underway, EOW officials said they have approached ITDC to enquire about the ₹20 lakh that Mohanty deposited on February 29, but said that it was not rare for high-value deposits to be made to the ITDC account. “We will try our best to get the amount credited back to Mohanty,” the SP said. When HT reached out for comment, the chief financial officer of ITDC, SD Paul, said he would not be able to speak on the issue as the matter was under investigation by police.
The stroke
Soon after he signed the agreement, Mohanty told his daughter Tamanna, 20, to prepare for a course in hotel management, in anticipation that she would run the hotel in a matter of years.
Instead, in a matter of days, Bijayini Mohanty, Tapan’s wife, says the family began to sense something was wrong. Covid-19 hit, and with normal business thrown out of gear, the three began dodging his phone calls. “Every time he would call Chandan Akash, he would say ITDC office is closed due to Covid-19. There was no way to disbelieve it. However, he stopped responding to my husband’s calls and I started believing that my husband was ripped off,” Bijayini said. In September, Tapan Mohanty contracted Covid-19, and recovered a month later. Calls became infrequent, but even when they were made, there was no response.
Then, a bigger tragedy hit.
In December, Mohanty suffered a stroke, and was admitted to a private hospital in Bhubaneswar. “Surgery was done in his brain, and a month later it was found that he developed a bacterial infection in his head. So a second surgery was done because his brain was swelling up. He was getting violent too,” said Mohanty’s wife. A third surgery followed soon after, and Mohanty lost the ability to speak. “A brain abscess had developed due to the bacterial fungal infection following the stroke in his brain. The surgery was necessary to evacuate the puss which was life threatening. The trauma has left him without the power to speak,” said neurosurgeon Dr Somnath Jena, who operated on him.
Mohanty’s distraught wife kept making calls to the three men to return their money; the treatment cost the family ₹21 lakh, the medication and physiotherapy not included. The main accused even visited Mohanty in hospital in January.
The unraveling
On August 21, the Economic Offences Wing of the Odisha Police announced the arrest of a self-proclaimed baba Swami Bijayanandaji Maharaj, also known as Bijayananda Choudhary, and one other accomplice for allegedly duping a contractor for ₹3 crore. Choudhary and the accomplice allegedly took the money from the contractor, giving him fake work orders for the renovation of two OTDC-run properties near Chilika Lake — one at Barkul in Khurda district and the other in Rambha in Ganjam district. The name of the accomplice was Chandan Akash Mohanty.
Taking care of her ailing husband in Puri, Bijayini instantly recognised Chandan Mohanty when his name appeared in local newspapers on August 22. “When we arrested Chandan Akash Mohanty in August we found some official stamps of ITDC on him, and knew there must be other frauds too. Then Tapan Mohanty’s wife sent a letter to us complaining that her husband was also conned by the man. Our subsequent investigation led to the arrest of Anikesh Sahu on October 21. The third accused is still on the run, and we are investigating the involvement of more people as well,” said Tripathy, SP, EOW.
Police officials said that Sahu worked with an event management company in the state. Chandan Mohanty is a civil engineer who briefly worked with the Odisha Tourism Development Corporation, and was the mastermind of the operation. “He is as polished as one can be, wears branded clothes, and speaks in a calm, gentle voice. He married last year and hosted a lavish reception in a renowned hotel in Bhubaneswar. He probably got the idea of posing as an ITDC official while working with the state-owned OTDC. The other accused, Anikesh Sahu, worked in a jewellery shop owned by his uncle,” said the SP. The accused have been arrested under sections 419 (cheating for impersonation), 420 (cheating and dishonesty inducing delivery of property), 467 (forgery of valuable security), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), and 471(using forged documents) of the Indian Penal Code.
The two-storey Puri home of the Mohantys, constructed in 2012, is ornately decorated with a large television in the drawing room. Secured by steel gates, Mohanty lives on the second floor. Yet, this is a family sinking under the weight of a failed enterprise. Mohanty had begun making financial preparations, and planned to approach banks to finance the hotel deal.
“He pawned my gold jewellery for about ₹4.5 lakh, took personal loans at high interest rates, and sold some of his land for the deal. Now people are calling me up asking for money that he borrowed,” said Bijayini Mohanty.
“This hotel deal has ruined my family.”
