Bhubaneswar: The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) has arrested sibling duo, Manas Ranjan Dash and Tapas Kumar Dash on charges of misappropriating Government subsidy for agricultural equipment to the tune of Rs 6.81 crore with the help of fake invoices. Manas is the Director of M/s Sheetal Agro Inputs Pvt. Ltd while and Tapas is the Proprietor of M/s Mishita Enterprises, located at Purohitpur in Jagatsinghpur.
The duo was booked under Sections 420/467/ 468/ 471/ 120B IPC and Section 66 of IT Act and were forwarded to the Court of SDJM, Jagatsinghpur. EOW DSP AK Mishra while investigating a similar case came to know about this fraud. “The accused misappropriated the Government subsidy meant for the farmers/beneficiaries amounting to Rs. 6.81 crores by manufacturing and using forged documents/email id, UTR etc,” the EOW stated.
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 in connivance with its eight dealers including M/s Mishita Enterprises uploaded a series of false/fake invoices/ data/ information for the supply/sale of 504 Transplanters to 8 beneficiaries from 19 districts.
He managed to avail subsidy amount of Rs.6,81,53,048 under DBT Scheme, which was disbursed in the bank accounts of concerned beneficiaries/farmers by the Agriculture Department and misappropriated the same. In the entire process, actual machine/ transplanter was not manufactured or sold but a subsidy was availed by the beneficiaries.
“It has also been ascertained that soon after the subsidy amount was credited to the account of beneficiary/ farmer, accused Manas Ranjan Das and his brother Tapas Ranjan Dash and other dealers used to lure the beneficiary to withdraw the total subsidy amount. They took away major subsidy amount in cash from them by paying some amounts/ cuts to the concerned farmer/ beneficiary,” the EOW added,
During the 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 investigation of the case is on, a EOW official said.
