BHUBANESWAR: Commissionerate police has arrested the director of a Delhi-based company along with an employee for trying to pressurise East Coast Railway (ECoR) authorities to cancel the transfer of a section engineer under Khurda division by posing as the personal assistant (PA) of Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw.
A native of Khaira in Balasore district, Gopal Satapathy, the director of Snowbell Tradelinks Private Limited, had instructed his employee, Samarth Vishwakarma to impersonate as the Minister’s PA to get the transfer of the section engineer PK Panigrahi cancelled. Viswakarma had allegedly called ECoR General Manager Vidya Bhushan several times this month.
Satapathy’s company deals with health and medical products, housekeeping material and other items. He had applied for a tender to supply medical items to ECoR, a police officer said. “Satapathy had also instructed Vishwakarma to call railway officials and collect information about the status of his file. Accordingly, Vishwakarma called up officials concerned and attempted to intimidate them by saying he was present with the Minister,” said the officer.
However, the railway officials verified Vishwakarma’s claims and came to know the Union Minister has not appointed any such person as his personal assistant. They then lodged a complaint with Chandrasekharpur police station in this connection.
A team of Commissionerate Police launched an investigation and nabbed Vishwakarma from Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh on July 23. He had called the railway officials at least thrice this month. He admitted to have posed as the PA of the Minister on Satapathy’s instruction, police sources said.
Acting on his information, Satapathy was arrested from Delhi on Thursday. He was brought to the city on transit remand on Friday. Police is investigating the connection between the duo and the engineer in question, the officer said.
CBI case against postal staff
Bhubaneswar: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Friday registered a case against former sub-postmaster of Malkangiri Colony sub-post office under Koraput postal division, Biswanath Podiami, and others for allegedly misappropriating funds to the tune of over `1.16 crore. Podiami is accused of abusing his official position and falsifying records/data of the Postal department while he he was posted as sub-postmaster at Malkangiri Colony between January 29, 2016 and August 18, 2019. He reportedly showed fake payments made to the customers in daily transaction reports of the post office.