The Odisha government suspended Indian Forest Service (IFS) officer Abhay Kant Pathak on Friday after he and his son Akash were arrested for anti-corruption surveillance in a disproportionate asset case.
Pathak, currently serving as the Additional Chief Conservator of Forests (PCCF), Plan, Program and Afforestation, Odisha, was arrested along with his son Akash Kumar Pathak in connection with the DA case.
The court of the Bhubaneswar Special Surveillance Judge referred them to judicial custody until 9 December after their request for bail was rejected.
Consequently, a case has been registered against Pathak and her son under various sections of the Corruption Prevention (Amendment) Act 2018.
The IFS officer from the 1987 lot was found in possession of disproportionate assets amounting to ₹9.35 crore beyond your known sources of income. This amount was about 435% of the total income from all its known sources, an official statement said.
Since huge cash deposits have been made to private banks via deposit slips and ATM counters and the father and son duo have made high-value transactions on the accounts, the details of the bank operations are being investigated. banks involved in this regard, he added.
Officials are also investigating the details of your income tax returns, investments in stocks, mutual funds and other market instruments. The transactional and property aspects of benami are also being studied.
Surveillance detectives conduct simultaneous searches
Before catching the IFS officer and his son, surveillance detectives had conducted simultaneous searches at five locations in Bhubaneswar, seven locations in Mumbai and Pune, and one location in Bihar on November 25 and 26 based on warrants from registration issued by the Court of Special Judges. Surveillance, Bhubaneswar.
During the raids, they recovered ₹50 lakh in cash from Abhay Kant Pathak’s nephew, ₹20 lakh from your driver, gold ornaments weighing 800 grams and documents related to the purchase of gold jewelry for value ₹23 lakh, the statement said.
Expensive cars and motorcycles registered in his son’s name were found, according to the statement.
IFS officer took 20 chartered flights during shutdown
Surveillance detectives found that the officer and his family had made around 20 trips to different cities in India via chartered planes at a cost of more than ₹3 crore during the confinement.
Value invoices ₹90 lakh at Taj Mahal Palace, Mumbai, two luxury apartments in Pune, a rented Pune country house, Mercedes, BMW and Tata Harrier in the name of Akash Pathak in Bhubaneswar were also found.
According to a report by Hindustan TimesAkash, Pathak’s son, was allegedly cheating people out of money, promising to get them jobs at Tata Motors by falsely claiming that he was managing director of Tata Motors. In May, the firm had complained to the CID against Akash, accusing him of cheating, counterfeiting and posing as the CEO of the company.
In order to broaden the scope of the investigation, Odisha Vigilance has formed a 20-member Special Investigation Team to conduct further interrogations in this case.
With contributions from the agency
.
