Continuing their investigations for the second day on Tuesday, the Vigilance sleuths collected several incriminating documentary and other evidences after raiding houses of several corporators and the office of the civic body in connection with relief loot case.
At least 30 teams of the anti-corruption wing of the police simultaneously searched the houses of 29 CMC corporators, including that of 21 ruling party corporators on the day while another team raided the CMC office and the residences of its former commissioner NR Mohapatra and deputy commissioner Jaganarayan Kujur.
For their dubious role in the sordid affair of misappropriating of relief materials, Mohapatra was removed from his post while Kujur was placed under suspension on Monday. likewise, a senior BJD corporator and former deputy mayor of the city Madhusudan Sahu was also suspended from the party by the BJD president and Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik.
Vigilance sources said that both Mohapatra and Kujur were being examined in detail regarding the distribution of relief material and the discrepancies thereof. They would also be quizzed as the enquiry advances further. Earlier in the morning, the search parties had obtained search warrants in the names of the corporators and officials from the relevant courts.
So far the Vigilance enquiry has revealed that at least 27,000 people of Cuttack city were evacuated on October 12 from low-lying areas to safer places in view of the severe cyclone and they were sheltered at 72 shelter houses.
Accordingly, the civic body had decided to provide the evacuees with cooked food for three days and procured the materials.
While the Cuttack district administration had provided 191 quintals of rice for the purpose, the CMC of its own had procured other materials like dal, cooking oil, potatoes, biscuits and lanterns and had decided to open free kitchens at four places in the city from where cooked foods were to be supplied to all shelter homes.
Vigilance enquiries further revealed that the CMC officials could not run the free kitchens with the help of Government employees and instead allowed the corporators and other private parties to distribute the dry food materials among the affected people.
Few ruling party corporators, however, bullying the CMC officials forcibly took away all the relief materials without accounting for the quantum they had taken.
Following a massive public outcry, the Chief Minister on Monday handed over the case to the Vigilance Directorate asking it to verify the allegations of misappropriation of relief materials by the CMC officials and the corporators.