Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Odisha Police arrested a fraudster in the Bargarh district on the charge of allegedly siphoning off government subsidies amounting to Rs 7.16 crore crore in lieu of supplying agricultural equipment to farmers in several parts of Odisha.

The accused, Prahallad Meshua, a native of Bheden in Bargarh, booked under relevant sections of IPC and Information Technology Act was later remanded to judicial custody, EOW said on Wednesday.

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Earlier, five accused including the mastermind of the fraud Srinath Rana were arrested by EOW in the subsidy fraud case.

It has been established during investigation that M/s Varushapriya Agrotech Pvt. Ltd., a Bangalore based company having its branch office at Baramunda, Bhubaneswar, was dealing with the business of supplying paddy trans-planters to the farmers across the country and also delivering services and supplies to Odisha Govt. under various subsidy schemes.

Srinath Rana, who was earlier working as Regional Manager in the said company, was authorised to register the sale of machineries in the State of Odisha and to facilitate subsidies to the beneficiaries/farmers by accessing the Govt. of Odisha (Agriculture

Department) website www.agrisnetodisha.ori.nic.in by using the login id and password meant exclusively for M/s Varusapriya Agrotech Pvt. Ltd. company.

It was detected that during the period from 2017-21, accused Srinath Rana without the knowledge of the firm, entered into criminal conspiracy with the arrested accused Prahallad Meshua, proprietor of Subhalaxmi Traders, Bargarh, and other fraudsters and fraudulently uploaded the details of more than 556 paddy trans-planters with fake engine and chassis number of machineries (shown supplied/sold by their agencies) and names & photos of farmers/beneficiaries purportedly showing issue/supply of those trans-planters to the said farmers, in the DBT (Direct Benefit Transfer) portal of Agriculture Dept. of Govt. of Odisha and managed to get release of subsidy amount to the tune of about Rs.7.16 crore in favour of the farmers/beneficiaries by the Government.

Soon after the release/credit of subsidy amounts in accounts of beneficiary farmers, the accused persons used to lure the beneficiaries by giving them some token amount and were grabbing the major subsidy amount.

It was found that the cost of the transplanter ranges from Rs.2.33 to Rs.3 lakh and against each machinery, Govt. was releasing subsidy amounts ranging from Rs.93,320/- to Rs.1.50 Lakh.

It was further established that out of the 556 paddy transplanters, 54 were shown to have sold/supplied by Prahallad Meshua, proprietor of Subhalaxmi Traders, the authorised dealer of M/s Varushapriya Agrotech Pvt. Ltd. in criminal conspiracy with main accused Srinath Rana had provided fake engine and chassis number of 54 trans-planters issued in favour of equal number of beneficiaries/farmers of Bargarh and Sonepur Districts.

Against supply of those specific 54 transplanters, a subsidy amount to the tune of about Rs.58 Lakhs was released in favour of the farmers/beneficiaries by the Government, added EOW officials.