Bhubaneswar, 28 March (H.S.): Odisha Vigilance on Thursday apprehended Satya Priya Nayak, a Senior Revenue Assistant (SRA) at the Athamallick Tahasil Office in Angul district, while he was accepting a bribe of ₹20,000 from a complainant in connection with a land partition case.

According to official sources, Nayak had allegedly demanded the bribe to process an application for partitioning ancestral land among the complainant’s family members and to facilitate the issuance of separate Records of Rights (RoRs) for the individual shareholders.

Despite repeated requests from the complainant’s family, the accused officer reportedly delayed action on the application and insisted on a bribe for initiating the process. Frustrated by the harassment, the family approached Vigilance officials with a formal complaint.

Acting swiftly on the tip-off, Vigilance officers laid a trap and caught Nayak red-handed in front of the SBI ATM near the SBI main branch in Athamallick, moments before he attempted to deposit the bribe amount into his account through the ATM.

Following the successful operation, simultaneous searches are being carried out at two separate locations linked to the accused as part of a disproportionate assets (DA) angle probe.

A case has been registered under Cuttack Vigilance Police Station Case No. 7/2025, under Section 7 of the Prevention of Corruption (Amendment) Act, 2018. Further investigation is currently underway.

More details are awaited as the inquiry progresses.

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Hindusthan Samachar / Monalisa Panda