Bhubaneswar: The Economic Offence Wing (EOW) of the Odisha Crime Branch investigating an allegation of multi-crore bank loan fraud by Odia Daily Sambad today said that a number of incriminating documents have been seized during a search at the Odia Daily’s office in Bhubaneswar.
According to an EOW press note, a team of EOW today conducted a search in the office of Sambad newspaper today and seized some important documents related to EOW Case no 24/2023 U/S 506/467/468/471/420/120-B IPC.
The case was registered on 16th September 2023 against Smt. Baijyanti Kar, Soumyaranjan Patnaik and others on the report of the complainant, Asim Mohapatra, an ex-employee of Sambad/Eastern Media Limited Bhubaneswar.
“The case has been registered on the allegation that large numbers of employees of Sambad were forced to take personal loans under threat. The loan amount running into crores was not given to the employees concerned but allegedly used by their employer company Eastern Media Limited Bhubaneswar,” the EOW said in the press note.
In the complaint, Mohapatra has made serious allegations of bank loan fraud involving cheating, forgery and criminal intimidation. The victim was allegedly forced by the accused persons to sign some bank loan forms against his will and against his paying capacity. He was threatened that if he did not follow the dictate then he would lose his job. Under this threat and pressure, he was forced to sign many blank forms/documents including some blank cheques by the accused persons.
The FIR alleges that more than 300 employees of Sambad/ Eastern Media Limited have been forced to sign forged documents and about Rs 50 Crores have thus been fraudulently secured by Soumyaranjan Patnaik using these forged papers and threatening the staff of Sambad, the EOW said.
During the course of the investigation, so far, some vital witnesses have been examined. During the search in the Sambad office, a number of incriminating documents were collected. So far 15-20 ex-employees of Sambad have come forward with complaints of such forceful loans taken against their names using forged documents. Further investigation is on, the EOW said in the press note.
“EOW is investigating the case in a free and fair manner. A team of senior and professionally competent investigators has been deployed to ensure proper investigation into the case and to unearth the truth,” the press note read.
Further, the EOW clarified that Kanak TV has been falsely running a story that the EOW team at Sambad premises is saying that ‘they are under pressure’ whereas the EOW officer was actually saying that ‘there is no pressure’.
Stating that the TV channel ‘Kanak’ is spreading lies by distorting the facts, the investigation agency said that during the entire search, the EOW officers were very polite to Sambad officials and the search was conducted ensuring that there was no inconvenience to the staff and without disturbing the daily work of the newspaper.
