CUTTACK: The Vigilance Directorate registered two more corruption cases against the Orissa cadre IAS officer Vinod Kumar on Thursday.

The anti-corruption wing is getting ready to file three more similar cases against him soon. With these, the corruption cases against the officer will mount to 15.

Vinod Kumar, the former Managing Director of Orissa Rural Housing Development Corporation (ORHDC), was arrested and sent to jail in August last year. The directorate registered 10 cases against him for allegedly amassing huge properties disproportionate to his known sources of income.

Common accused

He, however, obtained bail from the High Court in all the cases and was released from jail after being behind the bars for more than a hundred days.

"Vinod Kumar is the common accused in all the cases registered on Thursday, while several other former and present staff of the corporation are made co-accused for entering into a criminal conspiracy and amassing huge illegal properties by showing undue favour to the loanees," said a senior department official here.

During his tenure in 2000-01, the corporation allegedly granted loans to builders and contractors unscrupulously without obtaining adequate collateral security and not conducting pre and post sanction inspection. Moreover, no follow-up action was allegedly taken to recover loans. As a result, repayments up to Rs.100 crores remained outstanding and their realisation was remote, sources said.

An internal enquiry conducted by the ORHDC observed that the "state of affairs during the incumbency of Vinod Kumar as MD was quite scandalous" and viewed the same as "nothing less than looting."

Shocking `findings'

During investigations made so far, it had come to light that Vinod Kumar and his wife Shipra Kumar, with no independent means of income, had invested heavy amounts in shares alone.

When the house of the former OHRDC accounts officer K.C. Sahu was searched recently, vigilance sleuths detected movable and immovable properties worth more than Rs. 1crore from his house. Sources said that Sahu had four two-storeyed buildings, including three in Bhubaneswar, four trucks, one car, two motorcycles, bank and post office investments of Rs. 10 lakhs. These apart he invested another Rs. 25 lakhs in setting up of a clinic and medicine store.

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