bhubaneswar the economic offences wing eow of the odisha crime branch on wednesday arrested two persons for allegedly embezzling rs 5 crore government funds in sonepur district in april this year the accused were identified as rajkishore nayak of bhawanipatna in kalahandi district and his uncle ananta charan pradhan of pipili in puri districtthe accused fraudulently withdrew rs 501 crore from the bank account of the zilla swasthya samiti in sonepur on april 7 by hacking the public financial management system pfms of the national health mission the chief district medical officer of sonepur lodged a complaint with eow last month after coming across the bank fraudit was a difficult task for the eow to make headway as they had to scrutinise over 5000 ip addresses before pinning down nayak the mastermind during investigation we came to know that nayak used to work as an accountant on a temporary basis with the national health mission in sonepur from april 2016 to december 2020 in march he conspired with pradhan and some others and hacked the national health missions pfms he generated an echeque worth rs 501 crore a senior eow officer said nayak currently works as an accountant with swami vivekananda national institute of rehabilitation training and research svnirtar at olatpur in cuttack district after generating the echeque the accused arranged duplicate stamps and seals of the chief district medical officer and additional district medical officer of sonepur nayak allegedly put the forged signatures of the concerned officers on the cheque and deposited it in the bank for clearance on april 7 the money was credited to the account of a company named ms naturalswe had arrested ms naturals employee samir kumar pati but we had not disclosed his arrest in the public as the main accused rajkishore nayak was on the run we have traced around rs 330 crore that was transferred to different accounts these accounts have been frozen efforts are on to retrieve the remaining amount the officer saidthe eow strongly suspects the involvement of some others including a few bank officials in the fraud we are verifying whether the bank had flagged the concerned district officials about withdrawal of the huge money through the echeque the officer said