By Our Correspondent
BHUBANESWAR/CUTTACK: Father Son duo crossed all limits in maintaining lavish life style by using official positions and assignments. They also broke all past records and cases detected by the State Vigilance in recent decades. The Vigilance raids at Pathak’s corruption empire that spread from his home cadre of Odisha to India’s Financial Capital of Mumbai to IT Hub, Pune and their travel list that ranges from east to west and north to west across the globe, is an eye opener for the Naveen Patnaik led Government, which strongly marketing 5T.
When IAS officer Vijay Ketan Upadhya caught , he was suspended immediately but in case of Pathak, he is seems enjoying the blessings of power corridor top brasses and the State Government adopting double yardstick in dealing with corruption cases relating to 2 All India Officers.
Even though, Odisha Director Vigilance Dr Debasis Panigrahi and his deputy IGP(Vigilance), Ghanashyma Upadhaya on Friday proved a point after the anti-corruption agency of the State Police arrested IFS officer Abhay Kant Pathak and his son Akash Kumar Pathak, who are accused of amassing assets worth crores disproportionate to their known sources of income. The father-son duo was produced before a special court of the Vigilance. But the studied silence in taking any tangible action against the erring IFS officer even after the Vigilance expose, speaks a lot about how Government downplaying it instead swing into action.
The Vigilance officials have so far recovered Rs 60 lakhs cash, gold ornaments weighing 800 grams, documents relating to purchase of gold worth Rs 23 lakhs, costly vehicles and huge money deposits following searches at different places in Bhubaneswar, Mumbai, and Pune associated with the IFS officer.
The officials have also detected cash deposits of about Rs 9.4 crores made in the bank accounts of his son. Costly vehicles like Mercedes, BMW and Tata Harrier and three costly Yamaha FZS motorcycles have been found registered in the name of his son, who has also been hiring costly vehicles on rent. At the time of search at Pune, three vehicles including two Mercedes were found to have been taken on hire by him. So far, vehicle hiring charges to the tune of Rs 25 lakh approximately has been ascertained.
Similarly, more than Rs 1 crore has been paid towards house rent of the luxury flats and the farmhouse. Hotel bills of more than 90 lakhs at Hotel Taj Mahal Palace, Mumbai and advance booking amount of Rs 20 lakh at Taj Lake Palace, Udaipur in Rajasthan have also been paid.
The foreign travel details of tours to Malaysia, Hong Kong, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, Maldives etc. have been obtained by Vigilance. Charter flight bills worth nearly Rs 3 crores involving travel from and to cities like Pune, Bhubaneswar, Patna, Juhu, Mumbai, Jamshedpur, Delhi etc. have also been ascertained.
Meanwhile ,Tata Motors Limited (TML) lodged a complaint with the Crime Branch of Odisha Police against Akash Kumar Pathak, son of IFS officer Abhay Kant Pathak accusing him of committing cheating, forgery and impersonating as the Managing Director of the company.An official of the Tata Motors Limited also alleged Akash Kumar committed cybercrime with the intention to play fraud on Tata Motors Limited and cheat the public at large.
The company in its FIR mentioned that Akash Kumar has taken huge amount of money fraudulently from unemployed youths to secure them a job in Tata Motors Limited. Akash Kumar illegally impersonated and projected himself as MD Tata Motor Pune Passenger Division and CEO designate, it said.
