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Journalism of Courage
Two days after conducting raids on 18 places in Orissa and outside including Rajya Sabha MP and chief minister Naveen Patnaik’s former political guru Pyari Mohan Mohapatra, CBI this evening raided the premises of senior journalist Lalit Pattajoshi over his links with chit fund firm Seashore.
CBI officials reached the government quarter of Pattajoshi, a consulting editor with Odia daily Pragativadi, this evening and continued to interrogate him over his Seashore chit fund links. The raid on Pattajoshi’s premises came after CBI arrested broker Subhankar Nayak from an apartment in Bhubaneswar. Nayak, from whose home Rs 14.63 lakh in cash, two gold biscuits carrying the logo of Seashore was seized during Tuesday’s raids, reportedly acted as a go-between among the chit fund group, several IPS and IAS officers and Pattajoshi. A CBI official said his role is being examined in the Seashore chit fund scam.
CBI sources said a diary seized from Nayak was likely to throw more light on the links of IAS and IPS officers with Seashore group. On Tuesday, CBI raided the residences of Pyari Mohan in Delhi and Bhubaneswar as well as two retired IAS officers who doled out favours to Seashore group during their service. Pattajoshi, an executive body member of Press Club of Odisha in Bhubaneswar, is reportedly close to Mohapatra.
Though CBI officials did not say if Pattajoshi would be arrested, he is not the first journalist to be involved in chit fund scam. In May last year, Bhubaneswar police arrested Srikrushna Padhi, editor of Oriya daily Odisha Kiran over his involvement in the Artha Tatwa chit fund scam. Padhi, who was earlier State bureau chief of A2Z TV channel, started working for the daily since 2012. In August this year, owner of Odia daily Suryaprabha, Bikash Swain and Kamyab TV channel owner Manoj Das were arrested by CBI over their links with Artha Tatwa. The two are still behind bars.
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