Suspended IAS officer held

 BHUBANESWAR: Suspended IAS officer Vinod Kumar, prime accused in Orissa Rural Housing Development Corporation (ORHDC) scam, was arrested by the State Vigilance for not appearing in the court despite summons issued in the past. Kumar was produced before the Court of Special Judge, Vigilance, Bhubaneswar on the basis of warrants. He was later granted bail. The IAS officer who is facing a series of embezzlement charges has been booked in over a dozen cases. He had been summoned by the court in two cases but he allegedly did not respond. Two warrants were issued against him following which the Vigilance sleuths arrested him on Wednesday. In fact, Kumar had apparently appeared in one case but had not conveyed the same to Vigilance while in the other case, he had not appeared. During his stint as the Managing Director of ORHDC, Kumar along with colleagues was charged with irregularities in housing loans running into crores of rupees. In one of the two cases in which he was summoned by the court, he was facing charges for criminal conspiracy with other corporation officials and a realtor Jagannath Rath of Puri to whom he had sanctioned ` 46.9 lakh in the guise of 19 individual loans without any proper scrutiny during 2000-2001. In the second case, he allegedly conspired with Niranjan Parida of Gajanan Property Dealer to whom ` 41.26 lakh was sanctioned on the pretext of loans to 12 individuals without adequate scrutiny. Recently, another IAS officer PC Mishra, facing charges of financial irregularities, was slapped “latka” notice by the Vigilance for not accepting court summons.