Sambalpur police cracked a major real estate scam, arresting district sub-registrar Surya Narayan Samal and four others, including land brokers, for forging documents and impersonating a deceased individual to illegally acquire land.
The accused, arrested between Thursday and Friday, include land broker Chandra Prasad Dunguria, Sujit Kumar Patra, Venkat Balaji Patro, and lawyer Ranjan Pattnaik. Police seized forged sale deeds from 2022 and 2025 linked to the fraudulent sale.
According to IG Northern Range Himanshu Lal and SP Mukesh Bhamoo, the conspirators targeted a 0.210-acre “gharabari” plot in Danipali, Sambalpur. The land originally belonged to Binod Kumar Gupta, a deceased government liquor shop employee.
After Gupta’s death in 2001, the abandoned land became the focus of fraudulent claims by a group including Ajit Jena, Dunguria, Raghunath Bag, and Govinda Meher, who impersonated Gupta with forged papers to facilitate the scam.
The investigation continues as police work to uncover the scam’s full scope.
