With iron ore prices hovering around Rs 3,600 per tonne, steel-makers are looking for alternative inputs for steel-making facilities. Perhaps, this is one reason for rising demand for iron scrap in the country.
Interestingly, Orissa, the storehouse of iron ore, has become a hunting ground for scrap dealers. With many sick units up for sale and Indian Railway?s Mancheswar Rail Coal Repair Factory (MRCRF) generating enough scrap, dealers from Gujarat, Maharashtra, central India have started thronging the state.
What, however, exposed murky deals in the scrap business recently was the killing of Biranchi Das, the coach of child marathon runner Budhia Singh.
It is believed that Das was killed as he was trying to expose scrap smuggling activities in the Mancheswar Rail Coach repair factory at Bhubaneswar.
As investigation into the murder unfolded the involvement of several top government officials, police officials and railway officials in the scrap deal, the state crime branch of the police last week began operations to get to the bottom of the deal.
Crime branch sleuths raided the premises of Brijbasi Iron and Steel at Mancheswar Industrial Estate and arrested one of its promoters, Baman Kumar Agarwal. Later, his father Brijlal Agarwal was held soon after he alighted from a flight from Delhi. Two trucks, used for transporting smuggled scrap from Mancheswar Coaching Factory were seized. The scrap, however, has already been disposed of.
The raid team, headed by SK Biswal, reportedly found clinching evidence of the existence of a well-organised racket in scrap in the factory campus.
The scrap was moved out of the coach factory at about 2 am on April 12, before it was given a green signal by the railway security as well as the Mancheswar police. It had not been auctioned at that time.
Meanwhile, the state police chief has suspended Mancheswar police station ASI, Bijya Kumar Mishra, for his suspected role in the smuggling. Mishra was charged with letting the scrap-laden trucks pass by accepting gratification.
??It is an organised racket, where the local police, railway protection force, and officials of the railways are involved in a big way. Besides looking into their roles, we will also find out links of gangsters and extortionists,?? said IG, crime branch, BK Sharma.
The Biranchi Das murder case has taken a bizarre turn with a hardened criminal, Akshya Behera alias Chagala, claiming to have received supari from Priyabrata Patnaik, an IAS officer. His statement has confused the police as Biranchi was a close aide of the IAS officer. Chagala, a close aide of gangster Raja Acharya, the main accused in the case, is perhaps trying to mislead the police. His dramatic surrender while giving an interview to a TV channel in Bhopal has added to the confusion.
Police officers investigating the case believe that scrap racketeers are working overtime to keep the police off their backs.
Meanwhile, chief minister Naveen Patnaik has requested a Lok Pal inquiry into the alleged police-criminal nexus in the state.