Almost three months after a direction from the Supreme Court, the CBI on Friday raided at least five places, including the offices and residences of former secretary of Odisha Olympic Association (OOA) Asirbad Behera. Soon after conducting the raids, the CBI was learnt to have booked Behera and a few others for criminal conspiracy, cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property.
Clipping the wings of Odisha’s powerful sports administrator by debarring him from contesting for any posts of the sporting body, the Apex Court on March 31 this year had directed the investigating agency to probe into the alleged financial irregularities pertaining to rents collected by the OOA with regard to 23 shops and a Kalayan Mandap, which the sporting body constructed illegally over government land adjacent to the Barabati Stadium here.
At least five teams of the CBI simultaneously raided and searched the two residences of Behera here, his two offices in the premises of the Barabati Stadium and the residence of his son-in-law at Bhubaneswar. Sources said Behera, his son, son-in-law and another OOA executive were quizzed by the CBI sleuths after conducting searches and seizing many documents from the five locations.
The illegally-constructed prime properties over the controversial encroached land were in litigation since 1998. But Behera had managed to obtain a lower court decree in favour of the sporting body in 2003, which was subsequently challenged in the High Court here by the district administration. The HC had turned down the lower court’s decree in which the OOA was allowed to take adverse possession of the controversial land.
Challenging the HC verdict, Behera had filed an SlP in the Supreme Court by engaging some of the best lawyers of the country. But Behera, who also served as general secretary of cash-rich Odisha Cricket Association (OCA) for over two decades and his family were continuously slighted by the apex court for using the leasehold land of the Barabati Stadium and its adjacent vacant government land as their own fiefdom.
In 2015, the apex court first directed Behera to stay away from the affairs of the OOA following which he had to quit as its general secretary, a post he was also occupying continuously for over two decades. Subsequently in March this year, the SC had asked the Cuttack district collector to take possession and manage the 23 shops and the Kalyan Mandap built illegally on government land adjacent to the stadium.