Just within 24 hours of Vigilance officials making some headway in unearthing ill-gotten fortunes of fugitive Government doctor Motilal Gouda, the Crime Branch (CB) police on Sunday arrested the suspended doctor from Vizianagaram in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh.
Police did not clarify as to in which court Gouda was produced in AP or whether he was brought to Odisha on a transit remand. Reports, however, said Gouda, the suspended Assistant Director of Factories and Boilers, was brought here on Sunday evening and would be produced in a local court on Monday and the police would pray to take him on remand for five days. Suspecting Gouda to be the mastermind in issuance of a fake gazette notification, the Economic Offences Wing of the Crime Branch had registered an FIR against him on June 9. Using the fake document, Gouda had insisted on corporate houses and private companies in the State to get their employees’ health checkups in certain selected pathological laboratories. He allegedly received huge kickbacks from these empanelled laboratories.
But Gouda went underground when the Orissa High Court refused to grant him anticipatory bail on June 24.
A 2007-batch MBBS, Gouda joined as an insurance medical officer in the Directorate of ESI under the labour Department in April 2009. However, in June 2012, he was promoted and deputed to the Directorate of Factories and Boilers.
Within a short span in Government service, the 34-year-old doctor made huge fortunes allegedly establishing close links with a couple of Ministers and half a dozen ruling BJD MlAs. He was enjoying such a political clout that the police were initially reluctant to register an FIR against him despite his criminal and corruption activities came out in open.
The Government, however, on Friday asked the Vigilance to register a case against Gouda and investigate into the accumulation of huge properties by him. Vigilance sleuths on Saturday detected assets worth over Rs 56 lakhs in the name of Gouda after a simultaneous house search of his Government quarter in Bhubaneswar, native house in Gajapati district and in-laws’ place in Brahmapur.