Arjun Vanzara, elder son of former Gujarat top cop D G Vanzara, was on Tuesday trapped and nabbed by the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) for taking a bribe of Rs 75,000.
Arjun, a mamlatdar in Vadodara rural, is learnt to have sought Rs 1,00,000 to strike off a bogus entry in a land deal under his jurisdiction. However, the deal was finalised for Rs 75,000.
Sources in the police department said Arjun was caught red-handed while accepting the bribe from his accomplice, deputy mamlatdar Jaswantsinh Hajure.
The ACB is also learnt to have recovered Rs 3.27 lakh cash from his car. The ACB have taken Arjun and Hajure for further interrogation.
Mamlatdar (or tahsildar) is a gazetted officer of the state government and heads a taluka.
Among several roles, a mamlatdar primarily conducts revenue administration as a custodian of land records. It is his duty to preserve land records and update them from time-to-time.
Arjun’s father Vanzara has been a high-profile cop in the state and has been linked to several “fake” encounters in Gujarat between October 2002 and December 2006.
Vanzara, along with other officers, has been facing charges of being part of plotting a number of encounters, including two that received maximum public attention.
One, the killing of Ishrat Jahan and three others in 2004. Second, the killing of Sohrabuddin Sheikh and his wife Kauserbi in 2005, and his associate Tulsiram Prajapati in 2006.
Vanzara was in jail for eight years before he got bail in February 2015 on the condition that he would not enter Gujarat.
This forced him to reside in Mumbai and it is only after a special CBI court granted him permission to enter his home state that he returned to Gujarat in April last. He received a rousing welcome on his return and has also hinted at joining politics.
Arjun’s cousin Manjita, too, is a serving IPS officer in Gujarat.