Odisha court dismisses helicopter case against Patnaik, Pandian
A court here on Wednesday dismissed a criminal revision petition against former Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik and ex-IAS officer VK Pandian in an alleged expenditure of around `500 crore from the state exchequer by undertaking 300 helicopter tours.
Khurda district sessions Judge Biranchi Narayan Mohanty said the petitioner failed to substantiate any offence, did not follow the mandatory procedure under the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), and lacked locus standi to file the complaint.
The court also found no illegality in the March 25 order of the Sub-Divisional Judicial Magistrate (SDJM), Bhubaneswar, which dismissed the original complaint. The revision petition was rejected as “devoid of merit,” the court order said.
One Sudhir Charan Mohanty had lodged a complaint against Patnaik and his close aide and ex-bureaucrat Pandian at the Capital Police Station here in 2024, alleging that they used helicopter tours using government funds without official sanctions. When no FIR was registered, he lodged a complaint at the DCP office and later moved the SDJM’s court.
However, the SDJM dismissed the matter on the ground that no cognizable case could be made out.
The complainant then approached the Khurda District Sessions Court.
Patnaik’s lawyer and former Advocate General Ashok Kumar Parija and advocate Sitanshu Mohan Dwivedi submitted before the court that the complainant neither produced any supporting material to justify the allegations. “This court is of the considered opinion that the complaint/petitioner neither made out any case under any of the penal sections referred to in the complaint petition with supported materials nor adhered to the mandatory compliance of Section 173(4) of BNSS, 2023 before presenting the complaint nor he had got any locus-standi to present the complaint,” the court said.
Section 173(4) of the BNSS allows one to send a written complaint by post to the Superintendent of Police if a local police station refuses to register an FIR.
“Resultantly, this court does not find any illegality in the impugned order dated 25.03.2026 passed by the learned SDJM, Bhubaneswar in dismissing the petitioner’s complaint,” the judge said in the order, while dismissing the criminal revision.
