The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the State Crime Branch on Sunday arrested Sibani Construction managing director Siba Narayan Chhotaray for cheating the State Bank of Travancore in the city and the Registrar of Companies (RoC) by submitting false and fabricated documents.
Chhotaray, who belongs to Balitota Sahi under the Nayapalli police limits in Khordha district, had submitted forged documents to the ROC containing fake signature of the Chief Manager of the bank and its seal, EOW sources said.
According to EOW Superintendent of Police (SP) Rajendra Patnaik, the accused had taken a loan of Rs 6 crore from the SBI Travancore branch located in Nayapalli area on December 12, 2012 after keeping two acres of land he owned in the Khandagiri area as mortgage.
In doing so, the bank, as per regulation, showed ‘charged’ status in ROC of its website. After the loanee repaid all his loans to the bank, the status in the website would have changed to ‘charged satisfied’.
But Chhotaray, after repaying Rs 1 crore against the loan amount taken by him, started cheating the bank and ROC to get ‘charged satisfied’ status and to free his mortgaged land. He, along with a Chartered Accountant Kulamani Parida and employee laxmidhar Sathua, cheated the bank putting the fake signature of chief manager of the bank and bank seal and by submitting forged documents at the ROC.
He then subsequently freed the mortgaged land and sold it at higher price to clear the loan taken from the bank.
When the bank verified the document after a year, it found the loan repayment process suspicious. On June 10, 2013, the chief manager of the bank K Jeganathan lodged a complaint with EOW office against the accused for cheating the bank.
The EOW officials investigated the case and registered a case on September 22 last year. later, the EOW arrested Parida and Sathua for their involvement in the case.