Kota, Oct 28 Kota Anti-Corruption Bureau’s Intelligence Wing arrested a Junior Engineer red-handed while accepting Rs 70,000 as a bribe in Bundi district on Wednesday, officials said.
The accused demanded 10 per cent of the total payment of 10 lakhs to a contractor. However, the amount was later settled at seven per cent. He had already taken Rs. 10,000 from the complainant, they said.
The accused, identified as Bhanu Pratap, was a contractual Junior Engineer in Bundi’s Taleda Panchyat Samiti.
According to Kota ACB DSP Chandra Kanwar, the complainant had approached the bureau with a formal complaint on October 7, saying that his bills worth Rs 10 lakh had been pending since February.
Initially, for processing the bill payments, the accused demanded a 10 per cent commission for himself and the Assistant Engineer, which was later negotiated down to seven per cent, he said.
The official statement and audio logs confirm that the accused had already pocketed Rs 10,000 for clearing earlier bills and was demanding an additional Rs 70,000 for the remaining Rs 10 lakh bill.
Following the complaint, the ACB verified the extortion demand, which corroborated that the accused was indeed soliciting Rs 70,000 from the complainant.
Setting up a successful trap at the Taleda Panchayat Samiti office on Wednesday, Kota ACB’s intelligence team caught Pratap red-handed accepting 70,000, the DSP said.
The ACB team subsequently arrested him and booked him under relevant sections of the Anti-Corruption Act, she said, adding that interrogation of the accused and investigation into the involvement of Assistant Engineer Mukesh Sain is underway.
However, Sain was not at the scene; only Pratap was mentioned as a sharer, the officer said.
(PTI News)
