BALASORE: The Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM) of Balasore Samir Kumar Ray today sentenced two government employees to nine years and three months of rigorous imprisonment (RI) and a contractor to six years and three months of RI on charges of misappropriating funds and violating government norms.
While the convicts, Chitta Ranjan Behera, project administrator of ITDA at Rairangpur and junior engineer Anup Kumar Das have been asked to pay a fine of Rs 1.30 lakh, contractor Lingaraj Sahu has been ordered to pay Rs 30,000 as fine.
According to the prosecution, Behera and Das had siphoned off Rs 31,600 in 1996 when they were the BDO and JE of Bahalda block respectively.
They had made false bills in the names of two persons – Satrughna Patra and Kailash Patra citing that two houses under IAY had been constructed for them.
Later, when it was found no house had been constructed, a Vigilance case was registered against the two officials in 1999.
They also had violated the government norms by awarding the construction work to the contractor Sahu.