A Congress MLA, who shot into limelight by casting his vote for NDA presidential candidate Droupadi Murmu, has been sentenced to three years’ rigorous imprisonment in a 21-year-old housing scam.

Md. Moquim, the MLA from Cuttack-Barabati and the managing director of Metro Builders, was sentenced by a special vigilance court in connection with the 2001 Odisha Rural Housing Development Corporation (ORHDC) scam.

He was asked to pay a fine of Rs 50,000 and in case of default of payment of the fine, to undergo rigorous imprisonment for six months more, said a media release issued by the Odisha Vigilance on Thursday.

“Besides, Md. Moquim, Vinod Kumar, IAS, Ex-MD, ORHDC, Swasti Ranjan Mohapatra, Ex-Company Secretary, ORHDC, Peeyusdhari Mohanty, Director, Metro Builders were sentenced to undergo rigorous imprisonment for three years and asked to pay Rs 50,000,” said the release.

Vigilance in its press release said, “They were charge-sheeted by Odisha Vigilance under Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 on 30.03.2005 for showing undue official favour, criminal misconduct, forgery, cheating, and criminal conspiracy and obtaining pecuniary advantage to M/s. Metro Builders Pvt. Ltd. By releasing funds in the guise of loans meant for rural poor, were convicted by the Court of Special Judge, Vigilance, Bhubaneswar,” said the release.

All of them were sentenced for the offence U/s 13 (2) r/w 13(1)(d) Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 and U/s 120-B/ (Criminal conspiracy) 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating) /471 (fraudulently or dishonestly uses as genuine any [document /420 (cheating) IPC. All the sentences are to run concurrently.

Sources said IAS Vinod Kumar and Swasti Ranjan had sanctioned Rs 1.5 crore loans to the Metro Builders in 2000-2001 for one of its projects for the construction of 50 flats. The Metro builders availed the loans by producing forged and fabricated documents. No tripartite agreement was executed between the parties. Their criminal conspiracy caused huge losses to the state exchequer and thereby caused wrongful gain to the builder.