MPBSE staff caught taking Rs 25,000 bribe in new banknotes
Three employees of the Madhya Pradesh Board of Secondary Education (MPBSE) were caught taking a Rs 25,000 bribe from their female colleague at the board’s divisional office on Tuesday evening.
Three employees of the Madhya Pradesh Board of Secondary Education (MPBSE) were caught taking a Rs 25,000 bribe from their female colleague at the board’s divisional office on Tuesday evening.
This is perhaps the first instance of people being caught taking a bribe in the newly-released Rs 2,000 banknotes in the country.
The three employees, who were identified as Bhopal divisional officer Ashok Kaithwas, section officer PS Rajput and assistant grade II RS Pal, were caught by a Lokayukta special police team.
According to official sources with the anti-graft watchdog in Bhopal, assistant grade II Roli Srivastava had committed an error while preparing a list of candidates for the Class IX to Class XII examinations, to be conducted by the MPBSE in 2017.
In her complaint to the Lokayukta, she said that Kaithwas and his two subordinates had demanded `1 lakh as bribe to save her from suspension.
A Lokayukta team first verified the matter and then organised a trap. The three MPBSE staff members had demanded Rs 25,000 as an advance, so Srivastava withdrew the amount, all in the new Rs 2000 banknotes, and then went to Kaithwas’s office, where the three were nabbed by the Lokayukta team.
Kaithwas, Rajput and Pal have been booked under IPC sections as well as provisions of Prevention of Corruption Act 1988.