The Anti-Corruption Bureau sleuths caught the executive engineer of Panchayat Raj engineering division of Kodagu Zilla Panchayat and four others red-handed while they were allegedly accepting a bribe from a contractor.
The arrested are executive engineer Srikantaiah, assistant engineer Tauseef, second division assistant Ramesh, office staff Kavan and middleman Santhosh. The ACB sleuths have seized Rs 4.10 lakh which were in their possession from cars, houses and from the office, said ACB SP Arunamshugiri.
As the raid was on, they had thrown the money collected from the contractor in a nearby forest area through the window. The officials have recovered it as well.
The officials also conducted a raid on the house of Srikantaiah. Contractor Nanda had submitted a complaint to the ACB along with the documents.
It was said that the contractor had applied for the work to repair the damaged road and bridge in Kadagadalu at an estimated cost of Rs 23 lakh, and for the construction of a solid waste management unit at Stonehill at a cost of Rs 28.5 lakh. The arrested had allegedly placed a demand for money to award the tender.
Tausif had collected Rs 14,000 in advance. On Saturday, all five were accepting Rs 2.53 lakh when the ACB carried out the raid.
They were accepting the bribe through a middleman Santhosh.
It may be recalled that Srikantaiah was suspended two years ago on the allegations of misuse of funds released under NDRF. He had joined back work after the suspension was revoked.
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