BHUBANESWAR: A man accused of committing a land fraud of Rs 2.12 crore has been arrested by the City Police. Padarbinda Mahapatara was nabbed from the city railway station on Sunday when he was about to escape to neighbouring Jharkhand.
Police said IDCO had allocated two plots in Mancheswar Industrial Estate Sector A in favour of Bapsa Enterprises, a food manufacturing unit, whose managing director was Padarbinda and directors were Bani Mahapatra and Soumitra Mahapatra. The accused had taken a loan from Bank of India in Saheed Nagar branch by mortgaging the plots.
However, when he failed to repay the loan, the bank published a newspaper advertisement in December 2019 to auction the mortgaged property. Choudary Pratap Kumar Das, who is the former principal of Prananath College in Khurda, expressed his willingness to purchase the property after seeing the advertisement.
He agreed to pay an one time settlement amount of Rs 1.65 crore to the bank on behalf of the three accused till March 20, 2020. The property’s price was fixed at Rs 2.90 crore in the agreement between the accused and the complainant.
However, despite Das settling the one time payment in the bank and paying Rs 47 lakh more to the accused as per their agreement, Padarbinda did not approach IDCO to transfer the property in the name of the complainant and issue a no objection certificate in his favour.
A case was registered in this connection by Das in January last year following which, Padarbinda absconded.