The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Crime Branch has arrested one Srinath Rana from the Baleswar Sadar police station area for embezzling Government subsidy of to Rs 6 crore meant for agricultural equipments.
Later, the EOW produced Srinath in the Bhubaneswar SDJM Court.
A case has also been registered against him under Sections 409, 420, 468, 471 and 120-B of IPC r.w. Section 66, 66 (C) and 66 (D) of IT Act, 2000.
The EOW began probe into a case registered on January 20, 2021 with the Bharatpur police on the basis of a complaint filed by KG Sree Charan, director of Varushapriya Agrotech Private Limited, Bangalore.
The Bangalore-based company having its branch office at Baramunda here supplies rice transplanters to farmers across the country and also delivers services and supplies to Odisha Government under various subsidised schemes.
The complainant alleged that the accused siphoned off the subsidy amount of Rs 6 crore and thereby duped the Government as well as the petetioner by fraudulently using the company’s login ID.
Srinath, who was regional manager in the company between 2018 and 2020, was authorised to register the sale of machineries in the State and facilitate subsidies to the beneficiaries by accessing the Agriculture Department’s website www.agrisnet odisha.ori.nic.in using the login credentials meant exclusively for the company.
During investigation, it was revealed that Srinath, who also owns an automobile agency in Baleswar, in nexus with others had fraudulently uploaded details of over 500 paddy transplanters with fake engine and chassis numbers and photos with names of equal numbers of farmers covering 18 districts on the website between 2017 and 2021.
Against this, he managed to get release of about Rs 6 crore subsidy amount in favour of the beneficiaries.
Soon after release of the subsidy amounts in the beneficiaries’ accounts, the accused managed to lure the beneficiaries by giving them some token amount and siphoned off the subsidy.
While cost of each paddy transplanter ranged between Rs 2.33 lakh and Rs 3 lakh and against each machinery, the Government was providing Rs 93,320 to Rs 1.50 lakh subsidy.