Post News Network
Bhubaneswar, July 26: The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Orissa crime branch Sunday arrested the managing director of a city-based construction company for cheating a public sector bank and the registrar of companies.
The EOW officials said they arrested Siba Narayan Chhotaray, the managing director of Shibani Construction, for cheating the State Bank of Travancore, Bhubaneswar branch, and the registrar of companies by submitting forged documents.
“Chhotaray had taken a loan of Rs 6 crore from SBI Travancore’s Nayapalli branch December 12, 2012, after keeping two acres of land that he owned in Khandagiri area as mortgage,” crime branch SP Rajendra Patnaik said.
“However, after repaying Rs 1 crore against the loan that he had taken, Chhotaray, along with a chartered accountant named Kulamani Parida and an employee of the Travancore bank, Laxmidhar Sathua, submitted forged documents to the registrar of companies that had the signature of bank’s chief manager and its seal. They submitted the documents saying the loan was cleared and took back the mortgaged land,” Patnaik said.
“Chhotaray then sold his land at a higher price and cleared the loan that he had taken from the bank,” said the police official.
However, when the bank verified the documents after a year, it became suspicious about the loan repayment process. The chief manager of the bank, K Jaganathan, lodged a complaint with EOW office here June 10, 2013, against Chhotaray alleging that he had cheated the bank.
EOW officials then investigated the matter and registered a case (23/2014) in this regard September 22, 2014. Earlier, the EOW had arrested Parida and Sathua for their involvement in the case.
Chhotaray has been charged under sections 467, 468, 471, 420, 120 (B) of IPC and was produced at a designated court in Cuttack.
Sources said the banks, as per regulations, show ‘charged’ status on its website when a person borrows loan and when he repays the loan the status in the website changes to ‘charged satisfied’.
