Chandan Rout, one of the accused, and (right) steel and mines minister Raghunath Mohanty

Bhubaneswar/Jajpur, July 21: Two youths of Jajpur district, one of them a BJD leader, were arrested by the Jharkhand police for cheating a mining company of Rs 15.5 lakh in the name of steel and mines minister Raghunath Mohanty.

While Biswanath Satpathy, a self-styled journalist, was arrested in Jamshedpur while trying to strike another deal with the same mining company, Chandan Rout, former president of Jajpur BJD youth wing, was picked up from Jajpur Road last night.

However, Mohanty pleaded ignorance about the incident. “I don’t know them. Many cheats are operating in the state. Thankfully, these two frauds have been nabbed,” Mohanty told The Telegraph.

Asked about the veracity of their claims that they had collected money on his behalf, Mohanty said: “They are just cheats. Truth will be out after the probe.”

The Jharkhand police said the two youths contacted Surya Prakash Mishra, chief of corporate affairs of Saha Brothers, a sponge iron plant in Jharkhand, over phone. The duo had demanded Rs 20 lakh for renewal of the lease for the company’s closed mines at Karamada in Keonjhar.

The deal was finalised, and accordingly, Biswanath went to the company office to receive the money. A sum of Rs 15.5 lakh was paid to him in the presence of company proprietor Sumitra Saha at their office on April 10.

When the assured renewal of mining lease had not been done, the company tried to contact the duo over phone. However, repeated calls to their numbers, provided by the conmen to the Jharkhand company, went unanswered. They then sought the help of the Jharkhand police.

“On receiving the complaint from Saha Brothers that two men in the name of Orissa’s steel and mines minister and his personal assistant have cheated the company of Rs 15.5 lakh, a police team came to Bhubaneswar to investigate. They checked the phone numbers, which were found neither belonging to the minister nor his personal assistant,” said Indubhusan, head of police team from Jharkhand.

The company owners finally lost all hope. However, all of a sudden, the company officers received phone calls from the duo last week, which helped in drawing curtains on the multi-lakh fraud.

This time, the fraud duo offered to help the Jharkhand company in purchasing a sick sponge iron plant in Khurda at a cheap price.

They demanded Rs 16 lakh from the company this time to get things done. The company officers agreed to their proposal and called them to Jharkhand with all papers of the Khurda unit.

When Biswanath arrived at the plant on July 19 to receive the money, the Jharkhand police trapped him.

A case was registered at Bishnupur police station in Jamshedpur under Sections 419 (cheating by impersonation), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 467 (forgery of valuable security will etc), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (using as genuine a forged document or electronic record) and 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) of the IPC.

During interrogation, he confessed to the crime and gave the details of his associate, Chandan Rout. A team of the Jharkhand police raided the latter’s residence at Jajpur Road town and arrested him yesterday.

Inspector in-charge of Jajpur Road police station Ashwini Sahu said: “The Jharkhand police arrested Rout on the basis of a case registered at Bishnupur police station. They had sought our help and we assisted them.”

Rout had been produced before the court of judicial magistrate, first class, Jajpur Road, today and his bail plea was rejected. He was remanded to local Rugudi sub-jail, said Sahu. However, the petition filed by the Jharkhand police to bring Rout on remand was rejected by the court, which asked them to file the petition in the Jharkhand court and obtain the remand order, said he.