A day after Odisha vigilance department finished its nationwide raids on the premises of senior Indian Forest Service Abhay Pathak for his ‘unaccounted riches’, the sleuths on Friday arrested him along with his son. The raids revealed the lavish lifestyle of the officer disproportionate to his known sources of income. Pathak was suspended by the state government after his arrest.
Pathak, a 1987-batch IFS officer, working as the additional principal chief conservator of forests (plan, programme and afforestation) of Odisha since June 2018, was arrested after vigilance officials conducted raids across 13 places, including his official residence in Bhubaneswar, his office, his apartment, the apartment of his nephew, driver’s house, his house at his native village in Bihar, luxury apartments and farmhouse in Pune and residence of his son’s manager at Samata Colony, Pune.His son Abhay Pathak, possessed expensive vehicles like Mercedes, BMW and Tata Harrier as well as high-end bikes such as Yamaha FZS motorcycles, was also arrested.The arrests came after a team of over 150 vigilance officials, including chartered accountants, bank officials and cyber cell, rummaged through documents and other records of Pathak and his family.
The father-son duo was medically examined before they were produced before a local court. Both of them denied the allegations of amassing disproportionate assets.“My son gets a salary of Rs 1 crore a month. I have no ill-gotten wealth and everything is legal,” Pathak said while his son said they were being framed. A special vigilance team last night grilled Pathak, his son, nephew Harsh and his driver.During the search ops in the last two days, the vigilance sleuths found that Pathak and his family had made at least 20 trips to different cities across the country through chartered planes at an expenditure of over Rs 3 crores during the lockdown. It was found that Pathak made cash deposits of about Rs 9.4 crores in the bank accounts of his son, out of which about Rs 8.4 crores was deposited in Bhubaneswar through ATMs. During the house search and subsequent inquiry, cash worth around Rs 60 lakh was found along with gold ornaments weighing 800 grams. He was found to own an 8,000 sq ft luxurious apartment with ivory-crusted bed.
In view of the expanding scope of investigation, a 20 member SIT has been formed to thoroughly investigate all aspects.Pathak’s son Akash was allegedly cheating people of money, promising to get them jobs at Tata Motors by falsely claiming to be a managing director at Tata Motors. The company in May had complained with the CID against Akash, accusing him of committing cheating, forgery and impersonating as the MD of the company.
