ROURKELA: Multiple teams of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Friday conducted simultaneous raids at the premises of existing and retired executives of Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP) of SAIL for extending undue official favours to two local business firms.
Reliable sources said informed the raids came in connection with the earlier arrest of the then Executive Director (ED) (Works) Bhubaneswar Prasad Verma in January 2017.
The CBI had registered two FIRs on Thursday following which the raids were conducted. One FIR cited criminal link of Verma and others with the Managing Director of Reliable Hi-Tech Infrastructure Pvt
Ltd (RHIPL) Surendra Dua, while the other FIR implicated Verma’s similar role with the Proprietor of World Link Corporation (WLC) Sriram Agarwal.
It is learnt, the CBI team could not raid the official residence of senior RSP executive Rajiv Ranjan, who was DGM (Technical) and Technical Advisor (TA) to the Secretariat of ED(Works). Rajiv was likely to reach Rourkela by Friday evening following which his residence would be searched. However, his new place of posting at the New Plate Mill was raided.
Separately, the Koelnagar residence of retired ED (Materials Management) Parmanand Sahoo, Sector -17 residence of retired DGM In-Charge (Coke Ovens) and the office and residence of Dua were raided. All these retired and existing officers were accused of extending undue favour to RHIPL in getting contracts, processing of tenders and release of funds/payments while Verma was ED (Works) during 2016.
The CBI team also raided the office and residence of Agarwal, who was accused of having received undue favour from Verma in securing supply orders for electronic, electrical, electro-mechanical equipments and parts.