JAJPUR: Kaliapani police has booked three engineers of Rural Development (RD) department for their alleged involvement in a road construction scam. The accused are executive engineer of Jajpur division-1 Bijaya Moharana, additional executing engineer of Duburi sub division Muduli Venkat Raman and junior engineer of Tomka section Rasananda Barik.
The trio was booked under sections 420, 406 and 34 of the IPC basing on the FIR of Superintending Engineer of RD department of Jajpur and Kendrapara circle Sanjeeb Kumar Das.
According to the complaint of Das, a tender for construction of a 7.6 km long motorable road from Ashokjhar foothills to Nagada village was floated at a cost of nearly Rs 12.96 crore in 2016-17. This came in the wake of Nagada hogging headlines over child malnutrition death. The entire money was sanctioned from the district mineral foundation (DMF) fund.
The tender was awarded to Andhra Pradesh-based Haigreeva Infratech project limited. As per the agreement, the contractor or the agency was required to execute all maintenance work of the project for two years after its completion, failing which its security money was to be forfeited.
While condition of the road became bad a couple of months after its completion, Haigreeva Infratech did not carry out any maintenance work. However, the executive engineer of Jajpur division-1 released the security deposit of over Rs 65 lakh to the contractor despite the…