The Economic Offences Wing of the Crime Branch arrested three persons on Friday in connection with an agro equipment fraud case involving over Rs 12 crore.
The accused were identified as Pradeep Kumar Acharya, MD of Annapurna Agro International Private Ltd, Prabha Ranjan Dash, proprietor of Dash Traders and Agro Agency, and Shaik Fayaz, proprietor of Shaik Fayaz, from Bhubaneswar, Daspalla and Brahmapur, respectively. They were forwarded to the Bhubaneswar SDJM Court on Saturday.
During a probe of a similar case of 2021, the EOW had come to know about fraud by the accused in conspiracy with each other in misappropriating the subsidy meant for the farmers or beneficiaries amounting to at least Rs 12 crore by preparing and using forged documents, email IDs and UTRs.
Investigation of the case conducted so far reveals that accused Pradeep is the MD of Annapurna Agro International in Baleswar. The firm is registered under the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) Scheme, both as manufacturer and dealer of agro implements like post harvest machines, power-driven equipments and rotavators.
The company had appointed 115 dealers throughout the State. Pradeep in active connivance with the dealers including the other two accused, Prabha Ranjan and Shaik Fayaz during 2016-17 to 2019-20, uploaded a series of false and fake invoice, data and information in respect of supply and sale of approximately 381 agro equipments to equal number of farmers, beneficiaries and managed to avail subsidy amount to the tune of crores under the DBT scheme and misappropriated the subsidy amount.
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It has also been ascertained that before the subsidy amount was being credited to the account of beneficiary or farmer, the accused in some cases collected the advance cheque from the beneficiaries under allurement in order to withdraw the total subsidy amount.
They used to take away major chunk of the subsidy amount from the beneficiaries by this devious means by paying some meagre amount to such farmers and beneficiaries. Ascertaining about the irregularities, the Agriculture Department has blocked th Annapurna Agro International Private Limited in its DBT portal.
During investigation, many incriminating documents were seized.
The investigation of the case was ongoing, said a release.