The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Odisha Crime Branch on Tuesday arrested Purna Chandra Rath, manager of Karamchand Thapar & Brothers (Coal Sales) ltd’s Paradip branch, from Kolkata on charges of cheating the company of Rs30 crore. The EOW, which brought Rath to Bhubaneswar, produced him before court later in the day. Sources in the Crime Branch said Rath had committed a fraud of Rs30 crore by producing false documents and preparing fake bills and cheques and transferred the money to his personal bank account.
After the company detected the illegal transactions, it lodged a complaint with the Crime Branch. Acting on the complaint, the Crime Branch conducted a series of raids and finally arrested Rath from Kolkata. Prior to this, the Crime Branch had arrested Ramesh Chopra, another staff of the company, on similar charges. Notably, the KCT Coal Sales is the single largest coal handling agency in India. It deals with all the major public and private sector companies and is responsible for the entire set of logistical operations involved in movement of approximately 60 million metric tonnes of coal per annum.