They break into the retired park ranger’s house and seize a mountain of money with an astronomical value
An anti-corruption raid exposes the lavish secret life of a modestly paid forest officer.
He was not a businessman, nor a senior political figure. Not even an executive. But Rama Chandra Nepak, deputy forest officer in Koraput district in eastern India, lived as though he were. Earning a monthly salary of 76,880 rupees – about $823 – the forestry official from Jeypore, in the state of Odisha on India’s east coast, had secretly amassed a staggering fortune, revealed only after a police raid.
According to local media, on July 25 the Odisha Anti-Corruption Agency carried out simultaneous searches of six properties linked to Nepak in Jeypore and Bhubaneswar. What they found left authorities stunned: stacks of cash, gold, silver, large bank balances and high-value real estate impossible to justify on a forest officer’s salary.
A hidden basement, a bill-counting machine – and a million-dollar secret
During the raids, agents discovered 1.43 million rupees in cash – roughly $15,200 – hidden in a secret basement of an apartment in Jeypore. The bundles were so large they had to use a specialized bill-counting machine.
The rest of the seized assets were equally eye-catching: bank deposits worth 1.32 million rupees (about $14,000), 1.5 kilograms of gold valued at over $157,000, and 4.637 kilograms of silver worth around $4,100. Added to that were six real estate holdings, including a three-story, 3,595-square-foot house in Jeypore, a 1,797-square-foot apartment in Bhubaneswar, two 1,496-square-foot apartments, and two valuable urban plots.
All told, Indian authorities confiscated assets worth more than $840,000.
This vast sum was accumulated by a mid-ranking official who began his career in the public forestry sector in 1989 and, over the years, quietly built an economic empire without arousing suspicion. The Anti-Corruption Agency is still cataloguing the haul and has hinted, according to outlets including Cafef, that his arrest could come within days under India’s Prevention of Corruption Act.
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