Suresh and Arun Pattnaik in custody in Bhubaneswar. Telegraph picture

Bhubaneswar, Nov. 11: The state crime branch today arrested two brothers on charges of impersonation and forgery in a case lodged with the police in 2005.

While one of the brothers impersonated a state government employee to usurp his land, the other forged documents to get a 2,700sqft plot in April 2004. The matter came to light when they tried to sell the land the same year.

The crime branch officials said the brothers, who had been at large since 2005, were arrested today from Kumhar Sahi at Aska. Acting on a tip-off, the crime branch raided their house and arrested them. The two have been identified as Suresh Pattnaik and Arun Pattnaik. They were produced before the sub-divisional judicial magistrate’s court today.

However, the court rejected their bail plea and remanded them in judicial custody.

Giving details of the case, officials said the brothers had grabbed a plot of land belonging to Suresh Chandra Pattnaik, an employee of Cashew Development Corporation, in Chandrashekharpur. The accused, Suresh Pattnaik, took advantage of the fact that he not only shared his name with the owner of the plot, but also belonged to the same village, Kumhar Sahi, at Aska in Ganjam.

Suresh, armed with forged documents prepared by his brother Arun, applied to the director of estates of the general administration department to convert the plot into freehold property. The application was made in 2003 and he succeeded in getting the land converted. In April 2004, the brothers tried to sell the plot to Rama Chandra Sahoo of Jayadev Vihar in Bhubaneswar. The real owner of the land got wind of the deal and lodged a complaint with the general administration department, which in turn, filed an FIR with the police in 2005.

The police registered a case under sections 419 (cheating by impersonation), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (using as genuine a forged document or electronic record) of the Indian Penal Code.

However, as the police failed to make any progress, the case was handed over to the crime branch in 2006. “Our team had been keeping track of the brothers’ movements. We arrested them on a tip-off this morning,” said investigating officer K.P. Das.