5-year imprisonment for retired DPO, 7 years for cashier

A court here today sentenced a retired district panchayat officer to five years imprisonment and another retired official to seven years in jail for misappropriating government funds to the tune of Rs 1.89 crore.
Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM) Raj Kishore Lenka held both the retired employees guilty for the offences under Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 and convicted them for various offences punishable under the IPC.
The court, however, acquitted another employee of the district panchayat office, Dillip Das, who was an accused in the case lodged by the state crime branch in 2011.
The court sentenced retired district panchayat officer Brajaraj Biswal to five years jail imprisonment, while cashier of the office Bichitra Nanda Mohanty was given seven years imprisonment.

Besides the jail term, the court has also imposed fine of Rs 20,000 on each of them.
According to the state crime branch, a departmental audit found misappropriation of government funds to the tune of Rs 1.89 crore in the Jajpur district panchayat office during internal audit of financial year 2010-11.

An FIR was lodged with the local police by the then DPO Narayan Chandra Behera on being directed by the then Jajpur collector.
Biswal and Mohanty confessed the crime and the cashier had refunded around Rs 20 lakh of the misappropriated money in four instalments. But, without paying the balance amount Mohanty went absconding.

Later the case was transferred to the state crime branch and it framed charge sheet against three accused - Biswal, Mohanty and Das.