CUTTACK: An officer of the rank of SP and two staff members of the police Signal Department have been convicted of misappropriation of government funds and sentenced to undergo rigorous imprisonment for one year each by a lower court.

Tapan Kumar Behera, an Orissa Police Service officer, Bhaskar Chandra Diabagh, an accountant in the Signal Department, and Kailash Chandra Mohanty, head clerk in the department, were found guilty of misappropriating money meant for purchasing radio signal equipment for Interim Test Range (ITR) at Chandipur in Balasore district. Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate (special) Suresh Kumar Patnaik, disposing of a case registered in 1992, convicted them under Section 409 (misappropriation of public money) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC and sentenced them to undergo one-year RI and imposed a fine of Rs. 3,000 on each of them. In the event of non-payment of fine, they would undergo RI for a further period of three months, the magistrate said.

NBW issued

Behera, who is currently posted as SP (computer) in the State Crime Records Bureau at Bhubaneswar, and Diabagh were present in the court when the magistrate pronounced the sentences while Mohanty was absent. The magistrate issued a non-bailable warrant against him.

According to the case records, the Balasore Collector deposited two bank drafts for Rs. 47,430 with the SP signal office here in 1989-90 for purchase of radio signal equipment. The district administration had to use the equipment to ask the people staying around the ITR to vacate the place at the time of missile testing. But Behera, who was then working as SP (signal), failed to provide the utilisation certificates of the amount in spite of repeated requests from the administration. The Balasore ADM then filed a case in the local police station in 1992. On investigation, the police could find vouchers worth only Rs. 11,334 from Behera's office.

Charge sheets were filed against four persons in the case, including a DSP of the same office. However, case against the DSP was dropped when he died in 1995.

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