Cuttack, Oct. 19: Vigilance officials today raided the houses of a junior town planner of the Cuttack Development Authority following allegations against him of having amassed property beyond his known source of income.

The officials found properties of the government officer, identified as Bishnu Prasad Sahu, to be more than Rs 1.4 crore, which is more than his regular source of income during his 17-year service tenure in the development offices of Cuttack and Bhubaneswar. The officers recovered gold worth more than Rs 36 lakh.

Sources said four teams of vigilance officials had conducted simultaneous raids on Sahu’s parental house at Gop in Puri, his office at Arunodaya market, a three-storey house in the CDA area and a two-storey house at Gandarpur in Cuttack and a building and plot owned by his wife in Bhubaneswar.

Sahu, who started out as an assistant engineer in the Cuttack Development Authority in November 1995, had stints in the Bhubaneswar Development Authority in 2006 and 2010. In 2010, he returned to the Cuttack Development Authority as the joint town planner.

An official said the three-storey building, located on a 29,000sqft plot at Sector-9 in the CDA area, cost Rs 29.58 lakh while the two-storey house, which was in the name of his wife Dipti Chowdhury, at Gandarpur, was worth around Rs 24.40 lakh.

Moreover, a plot for around Rs 11 lakh was found in the name of his wife. The town planner also owned a flat at Pandara in Bhubaneswar worth around Rs 3.50 lakh.

“We seized the documents showing the junior town planner had paid a builder Rs 20 lakh to purchase a flat in Bhubaneswar,” said an officer.

The police also seized cash worth Rs 3.19 lakh from his house and insurance papers of around Rs 4.67 lakh.