Mohammed Sajid
Port Blair, June 15: Three more accused of high-profile LTC scam have been brought to Port Blair by CBI yesterday and by evening they were produced to special court from where all three accused were sent to CBI Custody. According reports, all three accused, Dilip Behera and Pankaj Behera and Sam Padhee, are from Odisha.
The CBI has already arrested two persons in connection with a forgery case against a Naval commander at Port Blair and 30 Navy officials for allegedly using fabricated bills of lading, transportation documents and permanent duty claims and causing loss of Rs 19.77 lakh to the exchequer.
Investigating in the case registered last year, CBI claimed that involvement of two officials — Gandhi Behera, working with the Fire Services of Indian Navy and V Kashilingam, a cook at INS Jarawa — came to light.
During searches at their residence recently, CBI claimed to have recovered forged rubber stamps of security checks of different airports like Delhi, Jammu, Guwahati, Bangalore, Chennai, Port Blair, baggage identity stickers of airlines like Indian Airlines, Indigo and Jet, blank boarding passes of different airlines, blank tickets and boarding passes of Directorate of Shipping, Andaman and Nicobar Islands of Port Blair.
The CBI teams also recovered eight hard disks, air ticket itinerary in the name of different Naval officials for their LTC claims besides scanners and printers, cash receipt books and bill books of different transporters, CBI said.
Interrogation of accused persons led the investigation to the residence of Dilip, younger brother of Behera at Ganjam of district Beherampur in Odisha and Padhi Printing Press in the same district.
The search at the printing press led to recovery of master copy of boarding passes of Directorate of Shipping Service, Andaman and Nicobar Island, Way Bills of All Indian Personal Service, Port Blair, Bill of Lading of shipping company.
