Bhubaneswar: The Court of OPID, Cuttack, rejected the bail petitions of two top officials of Solar Techno Alliance (STA) – Nirod Kumar Das (Odisha head of STA) and Ratnakar Palai of Bhubaneswar who were arrested by the Economic Offences Wing (EOW), Bhubaneswar, on August 6 and 15 this year respectively under Sections 419/420/467/468/471/120-B/ and Section 66 – C &66-D of IT Act, 2000, and Section 6 of Odisha Protection of Interests of Depositors (In Financial Establishments) Act, 2011.
The bail petitions of the accused were rejected by the court on September 16 and 23 respectively. It is worth mentioning here that the principal accused Gurtej Singh Sindhu, country head of STA, is currently in judicial custody.
During the investigation, it was ascertained that Nirod Kumar Das used his referral link to add 21,000 downline members under him and in the process had amassed a huge amount of wealth. On scrutiny of his three bank accounts, it was ascertained about Rs 31.23 crore and a cash deposit of Rs 2.10 crore were transacted in the relevant period.
He had also rented a posh office in the By Pass Chak of Bhadrak to run the business of STA and was holding regular meetings in order to induce innocent persons who would be his down-line members.
Similarly, Ratnakar Pallai, 45, was an important and upline member of STA having a huge number of members below him (known as down-line members in the MLM/Pyramid-based schemes/scams). He is very close to Gurtej Singh and Nirod Das. He is an MTech in IT from Karnataka University, Bangalore, and claims to be an international speaker, entrepreneur, and investment guru. He is also the propaganda head/social media influencer of STA in Odisha. He used to run a YouTube channel for wider publicity of this scheme.
Pallai is also a member of a number of other dubious scams too which are under scrutiny. He also runs an institute namely ‘Learn to earn”. However, after the arrest of Gurtej and Nirod, he deliberately deleted his social media accounts. He had also visited Goa along with Nirod to participate in the STA celebration.
It was ascertained that he had started an academy by the name ‘Learn2 Earn’ in the posh locality of IRC Village, Nayapalli, Bhubaneswar, to advocate and promote the benefits of investing in STA tokens. Further during the investigation, it came to the surface that he had been promoting STA tokens with other co-accused under the banner Learn 2 Earn, In this regard, he has also spent about Rs 1.42 lakh in an event to promote STA tokens in Hotel Presidency, Nayapalli, Bhubaneswar.
The accused Ratnakar Palai has invested more than Rs 60 lakh of the ill-gotten money to purchase plots in Bhubaneswar. On scrutiny of his personal accounts maintained in several banks at Talcher and Bhubaneswar, including an account in the name of Learn2 Earn, it was ascertained that a total transaction of Rs 1.3 crore took place in the above-mentioned accounts in the relevant period.
The accused has also been promoting STA tokens through his YouTube channel Learn 2 Earn. In this regard, an amount of Rs 3.75 lakh was frozen from five bank accounts of Ratnakar Palai.
Investigation into the case is still underway.
