Bhawanipatna: Two senior forest personnel including a former divisional forest officer (DFO) and an assistant conservator of forest (ACF) in Kalahandi district have been sent to prison over their alleged involvement in irregularities in a plantation programme in Narla range under North forest division of Kalahandi district in FY 2015-16 and 2016-17, officials said Tuesday. The accused have been identified as former Kalahandi North DFO Lalitendu Jena and present ACF Susant Samantaray. They had surrendered in court Tuesday.
However, they were remanded to judicial custody after Special Vigilance judge Srikant Mishra rejected their bail applications. There are five more accused in the case. However, they are yet to surrender and are currently absconding, police said.
Sources said that a plantation programme was launched on 1,450 hectares of land in Kherabondi, Narla, and Sargiguda forest beats under the ‘Ama Jungle CAMPA Yojana’ during the two fiscals mentioned above. A complaint was filed before the Lokayukta that the forest officials had misappropriated Rs 23,63,940 meant for the programme. Orissa POST then published a report in this regard.
Later, the Lokayukta directed the state Vigilance department to conduct a probe into the charges. Vigilance sleuths investigated the matter and registered cases against Jena, Samantray, former rangers Antaryami Das and Nrutyaraj Majhi, forester Sampad Kumar, forest guards Manas Ranjan Sahu, and Madhu Patel. All were charged for misappropriating over Rs 23 lakh.