Bhubaneswar: Following a raid on various properties linked to Odisha Police Housing & Welfare Corporation (OPHWC) deputy manager Pratap Kumar Samal, Vigilance officials Tuesday seized assets worth crores – disproportionate to his known sources of income.
According to a source in Vigilance, officers from the anti-corruption bureau also discovered a five-storey building in Gothapatna under his wife Sasmita Samal’s name. According to official sources, the building is worth Rs 3.89 crore. Besides, unaccounted cash worth Rs 38.12 lakh was also recovered.
Further, five plots and one building in Basudevpur town of Bhadrak district, 17 plots and 2 buildings in Bhubaneswar and Khurda towns, 25 immovable properties worth crores in the name of Pratap and his wife have been unearthed so far.
The agency sleuths raided a triple-storey building in IRC Village, Bhubaneswar, a six-storey building across from Maa Bhagabati Temple, Biju Pattanaik College Chhak near Jayadev Vihar, a single-story building in Sarakantra, Khandagiri – that was rented out, a flat on the second floor in Narendra Villa, a three-storey apartment named Ananya Towers, a three-story apartment in Balisahi, Basudevpur, Bhadrak, a temporary dwelling of his associate at Ananya Towers, Samal’s native house in Haripur, Simulia, Balasore, a relative’s house in Haripur, Simulia, Balasore, and Samal’s office at OPHWC, Bhubaneswar.
On the basis of search warrants granted by the Court of Special Judge Vigilance in Bhubaneswar, ten teams of Odisha Vigilance conducted the searches.
