BHUBANESWAR: The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of Crime Branch arrested two more persons including an IDBI Bank official for their alleged involvement in Rs 3.7 crore fraud.
One of the accused Sarojkanta Mohapatra, IDBI’s former Dandamukundapur branch head, was nabbed from Cuttack on Saturday while his accomplice Angel Mishra was arrested from Puri on Sunday.
Another accused Tanmay Maharana, the bank’s Dandamukundapur branch former asset officer, was arrested from Chhattisgarh’s Raipur on Wednesday. Mohapatra was promoted as manager and Maharana as assistant manager and they were posted in Ahmedabad and Raipur respectively.
The duo was suspended after an internal investigation of the bank. They were accused of sanctioning 35 fake Mudra loans amounting to Rs 10 lakh each in the name of their close relatives/acquaintances without their knowledge in 2018.
Both of them had later closed the Mudra loans by allegedly illegally transferring the cash from the accounts of Pipili BDO maintained at the bank’s Dandamukundapur branch. “Mohapatra and Angel Mishra were earlier studying together. Mohapatra and Maharana had transferred the cheated amount into the account of Mishra maintained with the State Bank of India,” said an EOW officer.
Sources said both Mohapatra and Mishra have criminal antecedents. Bhopal STF had registered a case against Mohapatra in 2020 in connection with a bank fraud amounting to Rs 18 crore by using a clone cheque. Similarly, Mishra was booked by Khandagiri police in a cheating case in September, 2022.