The Khurda sessions court today granted bail to Ashok Mohanty, the former advocate general, who was arrested by Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on charges of criminal conspiracy to help a scam-tainted chit fund firm chief with whom he had entered into a property deal.
Earlier, the special CBI court had rejected his bail plea on Monday and allowed the central probe agency to take him under remand for two days. However, the sessions court today heard the bail plea again after getting a direction from the High Court and granted him conditional bail.
“We argued that Ashok Mohanty cannot be held guilty for buying the house from a chit fund scam accused and the court was convinced. He was released on bail with deposit of Rs 1 lakh bond and surety of two bailers. The court has asked Mohanty to cooperate with the investigating agency,” said one of the lawyer of Mohanty.
Protesting the arrest of Mohanty, the High Court Bar Association had declared a two-day strike, paralysing trial process in the top court of the state and accused the CBI of falsely implicating a senior advocate. The Bar Association has now withdrawn the strike and normal work in the court is likely to resume from Monday. Several political parties, especially ruling Biju Janata Dal (BJD) had criticised the CBI for arresting Mohanty dubbing it as a publicity stunt of the agency. Mohanty, after his bail today, also came down heavily on the probe process of CBI. “The probe procedure of CBI is not fair at all and they are manufacturing document to implicate me. It seems as if the agency is working at the behest of somebody to malign the state government and using me a pawn in the political chessboard. I will expose the CBI and its investigation soon,” said Mohanty.
Mohanty’s arrest was a major blow to Naveen Patnaik government, after two of its MLAs were questioned in connection with chit fund scam of AT group.
He was the advocate general of the state government since 2009, until his resignation in May 17, when Naveen Patnaik government came back to power for the consecutive fourth time. However his resignation was accepted only on September 12, a day before Mohanty was quizzed by CBI in connection with purchase of a house from AT Group chief, Pradeep Sethy.
The business transaction between Mohanty and Sethy involved purchase of a two storied house on 4,000 sq ft land costing Rs 1.1 crore in Sector-11 of Bidanasi area in Cuttack city. The deal between Mohanty and Sethy was under scanner as the probe agency found that about Rs 30 lakh of the amount payable to Sethy still reamined unpaid. Mohanty, however, claimed he had deposited the cheques for this amount, which had not been encashed by Sethy as he was in jail. The CBI, after questioning Mohanty on September 13, arrested him on September 22 on charges of misusing his official position to corner personal gains.
