Odisha Police’s Economic Crimes Wing arrested two people on Friday on charges of cheating ??1 crore from a Delhi-based businessman posing as an IAS officer and an engineer in the Public Works Department (PWD) of the Odisha government.

EOW officials said the duo, along with one other person, cheated on Mukesh Jain, the owner of Rashtriya Stainless Steel, in New Delhi in 2018 to ??1.17 crore with a promise of high added value employment contracts from the PWD department.

EOW’s deputy inspector general, JN Pankaj, said he arrested Suryamani Tripathy, an employee of the office of the Directorate of Technical Education and Training, and a certain Amit Kumar.

EOW officials said Jain initially came into contact with one Rajesh Gahlot who introduced himself as a RAW officer with ties to several IAS officers in Odisha.

In 2017, Gahlot introduced Jain and his son to Suryamani by identifying himself as an additional secretary in the disability department.

“The businessman and his son were promised high value government contracts / work orders under Pradhan Mantri Yojana in Odisha. In 2018, Suryamani called them to the PWD Chief Engineer’s office in Bhubaneswar to execute the deal. Later, Suryamani introduced them to Amit as an engineer with PWD, ”EOW officials said.

The accused used Odisha Niwas in New Delhi to strike a deal and gain the trust of the victims.

They also recorded the cell phone numbers of senior IAS, IPS, OAS and judge officials on their phones to impress people, EOW officials said.

“The accused, Suryamani, handed over two work orders to the complainant, allegedly issued by the deputy engineer of PWD (Civil) for a contract worth more than ??80 crore and asked Jain to pay money under the pretext of speeding up the process, ”EOW officials said.

EOW officials said Jain began to have doubts when a no-work order was issued and an RTI was requested on the defendants. Later, after finding that all documents, including receipts from the Treasury, were false, he registered a case relating to the fraud. Gahlot has yet to be arrested.

“Several false orders, agreements, cash receipts were seized and it is suspected that the accused would have deceived other people as well,” said EOW SP Dilip Tripathy.