Bhubaneswar, April 7: The court of special judge, vigilance, today recorded the statement of a former excise superintendent, who had accused six IAS officers and an OAS officer for causing a loss of more than Rs 27 crore to the Odisha State Beverage Corporation (OSBC) between 2001 and 2005.

Subarna Naik, who retired as an excise superintendent in 2007, presented various documents before Sanjay Kumar Panda, special judge vigilance, Bhubaneswar, to substantiate his allegations. Naik had served as a general manager with OSBC for two years.

Naik’s advocate Atma Prasad Mohanty said that after the initial statement of the complainant was recorded, witnesses would be produced in court.

“The version of these witnesses will strengthen the case and then the court will issue notices to the accused,” said Mohanty.

In his petition, Naik named six IAS officers, five of whom have retired. Ajit Kumar Tripathy, who served as chairman of OSBC from June 2003 to September 2004, has been the state’s election commissioner since his retirement. Tarun Kanti Mishra, who had served as chairman of the corporation from September 2004 to February 2005, is now the chief information commissioner of the state. Both the officers were chief secretaries of the state.

The other IAS officers named in the complaint are Jagdis Prasad Dash, Sailendra Narayan Sarangi, Syed Osatuallh and the state’s home secretary U.N. Behera. The OAS officer is Archana Das Pattnayak, who is now commissioner-cum-secretary of revenue and disaster management.

Naik today told the court that during 2000 and 2001, Rs 7.41 crore was realised from sale proceeds of liquor suppliers towards various dues of OSBC and the state government had deposited the money with a bank. However, this amount was illegally refunded to liquor suppliers in 2003 and 2004.

Similarly, Rs 9.09 crore, which was realised from private liquor suppliers in 2001 and 2002 as various dues such as cash discount, excise adhesive label fee, excise pass fees and other dues, was later refunded to the private companies in 2004 and 2005.

Besides, he said, Rs 14 lakh was diverted as excise duty for a particular company though the amount has been realised as excise adhesive label fees.

The petitioner gave details to the court about the Rs 11 crore loss caused to the state government in 2000 and 2001 when the secretary of the excise department had not supplied the required 12 crore excise adhesive labels.

The then secretary has been accused of printing only one crore adhesive labels instead of the required 12 crore.

“Though the suppliers had demanded more labels, there was no supply and the bottles were sold without excise adhesive labels thus causing a loss of Rs 11 crore. Each label cost Re 1,” Naik told the court.