Vigilance officers on Tuesday arrested Pitabas Pradhan, Management Information System (MIS) Executive in the office of Director, Horticulture, for his alleged complicity in the bribe-taking case in which Director Dr Bijay Ketan Upadhyaya, an IAS officer, and YES Bank Bapuji Nagar branch vice-president Santosh Kumar Pattanayak have been arrested earlier.
Notably, Upadhyay and Pattanayak were arrested for taking bribe of Rs 1 lakh from an authorised representative of the SRM Plastochem Private Ltd, which is an empanelled supplier under Directorate of Horticulture for supply of sprinklers to farmers under the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana (PMKSY). Both of them are now in judicial custody.
An official released revealed that Pradhan had joined as a Data Entry Operator in the Directorate on outsourcing basis on January 8, 2014 and was re-engaged as MIS Executive in the Director’s office on September 1, 2019. He along with YES Bank VP Pattanayak acted as a conduit for Director Upadhyaya in the demand and acceptance of illegal gratification of Rs 1,00,000 from the SRM Plastochem.
Pradhan was working in the Engineering Section of the Directorate where he was processing the PMKSY bills for release of payments to the bank account of the concerned company after approval by the Director. Upadhyaya had instructed him in the presence of Pattanayak to coordinate with the suppliers/ dealers regarding payment of part of the payment released to their account as illegal gratification to Pattanayak. Accordingly, he was keeping track of bills processed as well as bills pending and was instructing the suppliers/dealers to contact Pattanayak and hand him over part of payment released as illegal gratification for the Director. He was also intimating Pattanayak about the details of bills processed and passed and the amount to be paid towards illegal gratification by the suppliers/ dealers which he (Pattanayak) was then accepting on behalf of Dr Upadhyaya. In case of non-payment of the demanded amount, Pradhan was also communicating to the concerned dealers/ suppliers that their further bills would not be processed, unless they made the payment of the demanded amount. He had also intimated the same to the authorised representative of SRM Plastochem in the instant case.
The release further informed Pradhan forwarded to the Court of Special Judge, which remanded him to judicial custody till February 3, 2020.