BHUBANESWAR: A day after two persons posted in the office of the superintending engineer (SE), Roads and Buildings (R&B) Division-I, Bhubaneswar, were arrested in connection with embezzling Rs 9.24 crore government funds, Vigilance on Sunday apprehended four other staff of the department for their alleged involvement in the case.
The accused are peons Dipak Kumar Routray and Laxman Biswal, and two private data entry operators Rajib Lochan Senapati and Soumya Ranjan Mohapatra.
Officials of the anti-corruption agency said the four were working under section officer Banalata Mohanty and junior assistant Bibhudutta Nayak, who were attached to the establishment section at the office of SE, R&B Division-I, Bhubaneswar. They were arrested on Saturday.
Investigation revealed the four had received huge amount of the embezzled funds in their personal accounts. Routray and Biswal had received Rs 32.47 lakh and Rs 16.21 lakh respectively, while Senapati received Rs 28.28 lakh and Mohapatra Rs 35.69 lakh, Vigilance officials said. They said Mohanty and Nayak in conspiracy with their associates fraudulently generated fake sanction orders and bills from financial year 2022-23 to 2025-26.
These bills pertained to provisional gratuity, under-utilised leave salary in the names of retired employees and fake claims against the office contingency fund. These fraudulent bills were illegally and unauthorisedly processed through integrated financial management system (IFMS) to siphon off the government money, the officials said. ENS
