Four days after police lifted him from his Nuasahi home in Nayapalli, the son of a former Odisha transport minister is in custody, and a Rajya Sabha MP has now put a price, a date and a political sting on the dispute.
Ajit Kumar Sahu, son of former BJD minister and three-time Parjang MLA Nrusingha Charan Sahu, was arrested on Friday on a non-bailable warrant issued by Delhi’s Patiala House Court. Commissionerate police say they are preparing a transit remand to take him to the national capital.
On Monday, BJP Rajya Sabha MP Sujeet Kumar told local media the case is not the Rs 2-crore land racket circulating in some accounts. “That two-crore story — I don’t know where it came from. It is false,” he said. “Ajit took Rs 25 lakh from me.”
Ex-minister’s son arrested in Bhubaneswar over alleged land fraud linked to MP Sujit Kumar
What the MP says happened
According to Sujeet Kumar, the approach came as an investment pitch: buy land. He says he first paid Rs 20 lakh, then another Rs 5 lakh. An employee from his office put in Rs 20 lakh. A person from Raipur also paid money, the MP said — money Ajit later returned to that Raipur contact, but not to him or his associate.
Ajit, the MP alleged, promised repayment within three months. It did not come. Sujeet says he set a deadline of August 31, 2023. That date also passed. After repeated defaults, he lodged a complaint on July 7, 2024 at Tughlak Road police station in Delhi, because, he has said earlier, the understanding was executed there. Complaints later surfaced at other stations as well.
Police versions of the 2022 transaction describe a promised plot of about 3,400 square feet in Kataka district. At the time, Sujeet Kumar was still a BJD Rajya Sabha MP and Ajit’s father was a BJD legislator from Parjang. Sujeet quit the BJD and the Upper House in September 2024, joined the BJP, and returned to the Rajya Sabha as a BJP nominee.
The MP’s Monday message was blunt: the Raipur money was repaid; his Rs 25 lakh and his associate’s Rs 20 lakh were not.
What the arrested man says
After the arrest, Ajit Sahu denied any land cheat. He told reporters he never promised land to anyone, took money from the then-BJD MP as a business loan, and had already returned about 75 per cent of it. The Rs 2-crore fraud claim, he said, was invented. He also pointed to timing: the money changed hands while Sujeet was in the BJD; the criminal case gathered steam after the MP switched to the BJP. In one account after his arrest he also said he had received no court notice and had been living in Bhubaneswar, not hiding.
Those are allegations and a defence — not findings. The Delhi case was registered after the July 2024 complaint. Police say Ajit skipped repeated court summons. Patiala House Court declared him an absconder and issued the warrant that Nayapalli police executed at his residence. He was produced in court after the arrest.
Not only one complaint
Commissionerate police say at least three other people have also accused Ajit of taking money on the promise of land. Those complaints sit at different city police stations. Sambad English and other outlets have described four alleged victims in all, including the MP. Figures in circulation have ranged from the MP’s Rs 25 lakh to higher unofficial estimates; Sujeet himself on Monday treated Rs 2 crore as rumour and Rs 25 lakh as the sum taken from him.
Ajit’s father, Nrusingha Charan Sahu, was transport minister in the previous BJD government and won the Parjang assembly seat three times.
The next procedural step is unglamorous and decisive: transit remand, then production before the Delhi court that issued the warrant. Until then, two narratives travel with the accused — a land deal that never closed, and a loan that, depending on who is speaking, was mostly repaid or never returned.
