Job Scam in Tata Motors – Court Frame Charges against BJD Expelled MLA .Pradeep Panigrahy

Bureau,Odishabarta

Bhubaneswar/Berhampur, 21/08/23: The court of judicial magistrate first class here has framed charges against Gopalpur MLA Pradeep Panigrahy, his aide V Sarveswar Rao and Akash Pathak, son of dismissed Indian Forest Service officer Abhay Kant Pathak, in an alleged fake job recruitment drive.

The charges have been farmed under Sections 419, 420, 467, 468, 469, 471 and 120-B of the IPC and Sections 66-C/66-D of the Information Technology Act-2000, the sources said.

On September 23, 2020, the Crime branch had registered a case against Akash on the basis of a complaint lodged by Trilochan Mohanty, Deputy General Manager-Ethics of Tata Motors Ltd, Jamshedpur, accusing him of committing forgery by impersonating in-charge MD of the passenger car division of the company.

 Akash allegedly used the logo of TML and Tata Group and also the brand name of the company and collected money from the gullible job aspirants to provide them jobs in TML.

On November 29 the same year, the BJD expelled Panigrahy from the party for his alleged links with Akash. The MLA was arrested on December 3, 2020, for allegedly duping several unemployed persons from Ganjam district by promising them jobs in the company. He had collected the money on behalf of Akash.

The accused  Akash also used fake visiting cards with official details i.e. “Akash Kumar Pathak, TAS, VP-Administration, 1st Floor, JRD Administrative Block, Tata Motors Ltd., Telco Road, Pimpri, Pune-411018”. His e-mail id and contact numbers are “[email protected] and 9556968888/7077608883”. He also used the id card mentioning the employee Id No.88176 projecting himself as MD of Tata Motors.