Bhubaneswar: The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of Crime Branch has arrested two fraudsters for misappropriating government subsidies amounting to Rs 6.81 crores meant for supply of agricultural equipment.
The accused brothers are Manas Ranjan Dash and Tapas Kumar Dash, respective Director of Sheetal Agro Inputs Pvt. Ltd. and Proprietor of Mishita Enterprises, located at Purohitpur, Taradapada, Jagatsinghpur, said Crime Branch Chief, Sanjeeb Panda here on Thursday.
Both were arrested yesterday in connection with EOW PS Case No.8 dt. 02.04.2022 and are being forwarded to the court of SDJM, Jagatsinghpur today, Mr.Panda said.
The accused have provided 504 agricultural equipments to beneficiaries by submitting fake invoices and cheated the lion share of their subsidy amount provided by the State Government, ADG Mr.Panda said.
The Government subsidy meant for the farmers/beneficiaries amounting to Rs. 6.81 crore, the Chief of Crime Branch informed.
Investigation of the case conducted so far has revealed that the arrested accused, Manas Ranjan Dash is the Director of Sheetal Agro Inputs Pvt. Ltd., having its office at Purohitpur, Taradapada, Jagatsinghpur. The said firm is registered with the Agriculture Department of State Government under Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) scheme as a manufacturing firm/company of Agro implements like transplanter machines etc.
During the financial year 2018-2019 & 2019-2020, Manas Ranjan Dash, in active connivance with its eight dealers including Mishita Enterprises has uploaded a series of false/fake invoices/ data/ information in respect of supply/ sale of 504 Transplanters to equal number of farmers/ beneficiaries belonging to 19 districts of Odisha including Jagatsinghpur, Jajpur, Balasore, Khordha, Kalahandi and Sambalpur and managed to avail subsidy amount of Rs.6,81,53,048 under the DBT scheme, which was disbursed in the bank accounts of concerned beneficiaries/farmers by the Agriculture Department and misappropriated the same, officials said.
The EOW also found that all 504 transplanter machines of Sheetal Agro Inputs Pvt. Ltd, during the year 2018-2020, 337 transplanters are shown to have been sold by its dealer Mishita Enterprises, the proprietor of which is accused Tapas Kumar Dash, brother of Manash Ranjan Dash and both the accused persons received the subsidy amount against those false sales by uploading fake invoices/data/information and UTR in the DBT Portal and misappropriated the subsidy amount.
In the entire process the actual machine/ transplanter was not manufactured or sold but subsidy was availed by the beneficiaries, they said.
The EOW has also been ascertained that soon after the subsidy amount was credited to the account of the beneficiary/ farmer, accused Manas and his brother Tapas along with other dealers used to lure the beneficiary to withdraw the total subsidy amount. They took away a major subsidy amount in cash from them by paying some amounts/ cuts to the concerned farmer/ beneficiary.
During investigation, many incriminating documents like the details of farmers/beneficiaries, fake invoices, Money Receipts and one Hard Disc containing the data uploaded in DBT Portal have been seized, the EWO officials informed.