29 Oct 2014

Why did Manoj Das keep mum in June 2013 with regard to the Seashore Chit Fund scam?

[It is not that Manoj Das did not know earlier about the chit fund scam of the Seashore group, the literary wing of which he was the adviser and for which he received one lakh rupees a month. Now he throws up his hands imploring the Heavens for justice and donates all that he has received to the Odisha Chief Minister’s Relief Fund, but what did he do when the Seashore group was publicly exposed as early as June 2013, one and a half year ago? Why did he keep mum at that time? And why did he continue to receive his honorarium? And why does he now create such a big scene as if he never knew anything about it? The following post, written by Subhas Chandra Pattanayak on 17 June, 2013, shows the nexus between writers like Manoj Das and corrupt business tycoons, who use the services of the former to establish their own credentials in the general public in order to draw unsuspecting investors to their fraudulent companies. – Bireshwar]



Posted on June 17, 2013 by Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

Eminent journalist Prasanta Patnaik has, in his column in Sanchar, exposed such a thread in the matter of economic offenses committed by Prasant Das and his Seashore group of companies that every Oriya who prides in his/her language, writers and scribes, feels ashamed.

Patnaik has exposed how a self-help group of writers and scribes have collectively enhanced credibility of the swindler by accepting big sums of money as their salaries and awards under the banner of a body of letters styled Seashore Sahitya Academy that the crook had floated to build up his image of benevolence in the public.

And, he has named the literary acrobats who have contributed to the promotion of climate the Seashore group wanted to lure the depositors.

He has named author and orator of international repute Manoj Das, known in Orissa as an ascetic of Pondicherry; and superannuated IAS officer, Rajendra Kishore Panda, known in Orissa as a progressive poet.

He has exposed how the swindler had contrived a method to fetch fame through these men. And how, under the presidentship of Panda and approval of Das, literary lightweights like college teachers Malabika Roy and Bipin Bihari Nayak and a veterinary doctor Duryodhan Das were teamed up in this dubious body that netted in, in course of time, opinion makers like Journalists Barendrakrushna Dhal, Srimay Kar and Sriram Das to pump in credibility to the censorable outfit by accepting its awards. 

When Panda as president of this Academy, allegedly functioned without receiving any money for the service he rendered, Malabika, Bipin and Duryodhan received Rs.60,000 each as monthly salary as its vice-presidents, whereas another teacher Narayan Panda also bagged the same amount as Secretary of the said Academy, Patnaik has claimed. 

Das accepted a monthly package of a lakh of rupees to act as advisor, he has noted, while questioning his prudence in being associated with such a dubious body against a salary of such a stupendous amount.

By actively contributing to the creation of misleading fame of a crook, who, on the strength of such manufactured fame, has swindled about 500 crores of rupees from the deposits of the lured people, the self-help group of authors and scribes, as named above, has played the nastiest possible mischief against the society, Patnaik has alleged.

Manoj Das and his team in the so-called Academy are making the matter murkier by their surprising silence.

The climate of swindling, cheating, fake fames, and hypocrisy that Naveen Patnaik’s deceptive rule for more than a decade has created, has, it seems, made our men of letters and societal conscience keepers such scraps that they have no courage to stand erect against luring currents.

http://orissamatters.com/2013/06/


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