Couple arrested in Odisha for duping man of Rs 1.5 cr

The Economic Offences Wing of the Odisha Crime Branch has arrested a couple for allegedly duping a person to the tune of Rs 1.5 crore.

The couple has been identified as Biswa Bhusan Biswal, joint director of a financial management academy, while his wife Mahasweta Biswal, is the managing director of a real estate company, according to an EOW release.

The EOW officials also conducted a search operation at the residence of the accused at Saheed Nagar on Tuesday and seized many documents such as agreement, bounced cheques and post-dated cheques.

One Debasis Dagara of Chandrasekharpur had lodged a complaint alleging that he had given Rs 1.89 crore to Biswa Bhusan Biswal and his company, but the money was not returned to him despite an agreement.

During investigation, it was found that being induced by Biswal and his wife, the complainant had deposited an amount of Rs 1.89 crore in their company after executing five agreements with Mahasweta Biswal to purchase five flats.

Accordingly, an amount of Rs 1.4 crore was transferred from his accounts and rest were given in cash, the EOW release said.

As the flats could not be sold by the company in due time, an agreement was executed between Biswa Bhusan Biswal and Debasish Dagara in which, the former agreed to return the invested amount of Rs 1.89 crore to the latter failing which he would sell the property situated at IRC village area of the city.

When the accused again defaulted, another agreement was executed between them in which Biswal and his wife had promised to pay Rs 1.76 crore as full and final amount, out of which, they paid only Rs 1 lakh at the time of agreement.

The last date of final payment was in 2017 and it was decided that in case of failure, Biswal would register IRC village house in the name of the complainant.

However, the accused persons neither returned the amount to the complainant nor provided the flats to him.

Investigation so far revealed that complainant stands cheated with an amount of Rs 1,51,30,000, the release said.