Bhubaneswar: Odisha Vigilance on Wednesday arrested two employees of the Health Department in Gajapati district for allegedly accepting a ₹25,000 bribe from a trained physician in exchange for processing his appointment as a contractual doctor.
The accused — clerk Jagdish Pattnaik and peon Niranjan Nayak — were posted at the office of the Chief District Medical Officer (CDMO) in Gajapati. Vigilance officials said the duo had demanded the money to clear the file for the doctor’s recruitment and issue his appointment letter.
Acting on a complaint lodged by the physician, a Vigilance team laid a trap and caught Pattnaik and Nayak red-handed while receiving the bribe. The entire amount was recovered from their possession and seized as evidence.
Following the arrests, simultaneous searches were launched at two premises linked to Pattnaik to detect any disproportionate assets.
A case under Section 7 of the Prevention of Corruption (Amendment) Act, 2018, has been registered at the Vigilance police station in Berhampur.
