The Orissa High Court on Thursday granted bail to former IAS officer Vinod Kumar, who is convicted by a Special Vigilance Court in connection with a corruption case in the Odisha Rural Housing Development Corporation (ORHDC).
The High Court accepted the petition challenging the verdict of the Vigilance court and directed the lower court to fix the bail conditions. It also stayed the Vigilance court’s order imposing penalty on Vinod Kumar in the ORHDC case.
On Wednesday, the High Court had also granted bail another convict, Peeyushdhari Mohanty, a director of the Metro Builders Pvt Ltd, in the case.
Also, on October 10, Congress MLA Mohammed Moquim, who was convicted in the case, had been granted bail from the High Court. The court later stayed the conviction imposed by the Vigilance court on him.
On September 29, the Vigilance Court in Bhubaneswar had awarded three years of rigorous imprisonment to four persons, Barabati-Cuttack MLA Moquim, Vinod Kumar, Peeyushdhari Mohanty and former company secretary of ORHDC Swosti Ranjan Mohapatra, for the loan scam in the ORHDC.
The court also imposed a penalty of Rs 50,000 each on the convicted persons. Non-payment of the penalty amount would invite another six months of jail term.
Vinod Kumar was the MD of ORHDC from January 4, 2000 to May 15, 2001 while Swosti Ranjan Mohapatra was the Company Secretary.
On June 24, 2000, the Metro Builders had applied for term loans to the tune of Rs 1.5 crore for its Metro City-II project at Nayapalli in Bhubaneswar for construction of 50 flats. Kumar sanctioned and disbursed the amount in three installments between July 6 and August 28, 2000. However, Vinod Kumar had not been delegated with any financial power for sanction and disbursement of loan by the Board of Directors of ORHDC. Even, he did not have the authority to sign cheques. Kumar in connivance with Mohapatra sanctioned and disbursed the loan amount by showing undue favour to the builder.
The loan proposal was neither placed before the Board of Directors of ORHDC nor the loan committee for appraisal and approval. No spot verification was made before processing of the loan application and during the disbursement of the loan amount. The loan documents like Income Tax returns, BDA plan for the project, project estimate and fire prevention certificate were not verified properly before sanction of the loan.
During investigation, it came to the fore that the Metro Builders had submitted forged and fabricated documents like BDA plan, project estimate and fire prevention certificate for availing the loan. Moreover, the loan was disbursed without adequate security. Besides, no tripartite agreement was executed between the parties. As on October 31, 2007, the outstanding loan amount against the Metro Builders was Rs 6.22 crore.
“All the accused persons by hatching criminal conspiracy caused huge loss to the government and thereby caused wrongful gain to the builder,” observed the Vigilance Special Judge.
During the trial, the prosecution examined as many as seventeen witnesses and relevant documents to substantiate the charges against the accused persons.
Notably, Vinod Kumar was dismissed from service in February, 2022.