11 officials arrested in Bihar for taking bribes in new currency notes

Vigilance sleuths in Bihar have arrested 11 government officials for seeking bribes in new currency notes. All of them were arrested since the Indian government launched the Rs1000 and Rs500 currency ban last month in a bid to curb black money and contain terror funding.

The official caught by the vigilance sleuths include Sachchidanand Singh and Binod Kumar, police inspectors, Dharmendra Kumar Bharti and Bindo Kumar Giri, circle officers, Satish Kumar, assistant engineer, Rahul Oran, Nazir, Umashankar Singh, education department official, Laxman Prasad, project director, and Pramod Kumar, agriculture coordinator.

All were arrested while accepting bribes in new currency notes. “They had specifically told the victims to come with new currency notes in denomination of Rs2000 and refused to accept the demonetised currency,” a vigilance bureau official said seeking anonymity.

According to him, the arrested officials are among 100 people nabbed by the vigilance bureau on corruption charges since January this year.

The vigilance sleuths in the meanwhile conducted raids at the two separate locations of Varun Kumar Sikdar, Deputy Commissioner of Commercial Taxes, in Patna on Saturday night for allegedly amassing wealth disproportionate to his known source of income. During the raid which continued till late night, the sleuth recovered Rs122,000 (Dh6,605) in cash, 14 bank passbooks and documents of a residential flat.

In course of inquiry, the sleuths also came to know about his one bank locker where gold jewelleries worth Rs2.4 million is said to have been stored. The official had joined the department in 1993, according to the vigilance sleuths.

Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar has declared a war on corruption. Under part of the campaign, the state government has confiscated the bungalows of many corrupt officials and converted them into schools for under-privileged children. They include SS Verma, a senior Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer and Narayan Mishra who served as the former Director General of Police in Bihar.

source: GULF NEWS