IAS officer convicted in rural housing scam in Odisha

BHUBANESWAR: A special vigilance court here Monday convicted a suspended IAS officer, Vinod Kumar, and five others in a Rs 1.02-crore scam in the Odisha Rural Housing Development Corporation (ORHDC) and awarded them rigorous imprisonment of three years.nnKumar, a 1989-batch IAS officer and a former managing director of ORHDC, four former officials of the agency and a builder were also ordered by the court to pay fine of Rs 50,000 each, failing which they will have to undergo rigorous imprisonment of six additional months.nnThe six have been convicted of misappropriating ORHDC funds on the pretext of providing flats to 27 people.nnThe IAS officer was convicted in a case of financial irregularity of Rs 55 lakh earlier.nnKumar was arrested on August 10 in the first case soon after he surrendered in the court. The court had pronounced three-year jail term for Kumar and another person.nnAfter hearing their plea, the high court had granted them interim relief on July 8.nnOn Monday, the special vigilance court found Kumar and four others guilty of offences under Prevention of Corruption Act and sections of Indian Penal Code for granting undue official favour, criminal misconduct, forgery, cheating and criminal conspiracy and obtaining pecuniary advantage to builder Bijay Kumar Biswal.nnThey were held guilty of releasing funds in the guise of 27 individual loans meant for the rural poor in an arbitrary manner without following set guidelines.nnBiswal too was awarded similar sentence.nnBesides Kumar and Biswal, the others convicted are Pradeep Kumar Rout, Swosti Ranjan Mohapatra, Jnanendra Swain and Satya Prakash Behera – all former officers of ORHDC.nnAll of them were released on bail under section 389 of CrPC.nnSource: Press Trust of India