VB recovers ₹7 lakh, gold ornaments from milk plant manager’s house

The cooperative department official was arrested for demanding and accepting a bribe of ₹50,000; the Mohali court on Wednesday has granted two-day police remand of the accused to the VB for further investigation

The Punjab vigilance bureau (VB) has recovered valuable assets and items from the house of Manoj Kumar Srivastva, a procurement manager of a Mohali milk plant, who was arrested on Tuesday for demanding and accepting a bribe of ₹50,000.

A VB spokesperson said during search of the house of the said accused, ₹7 lakh, eight gold rings, one gold ‘kara’, some ornaments and 14 costly watches have been recovered from his possession.

The Mohali court on Wednesday has granted two-day police remand of the accused to the VB for further investigation.

A VB spokesperson said during search of the house of the said accused, ₹7 lakh, eight gold rings, one gold ‘kara’, some ornaments and 14 costly watches have been recovered from his possession. He added that one watch worth ₹45,000 has also been confiscated which was given by the complainant to the manager after purchasing it from a Chandigarh market.

The spokesperson said the VB has asked the bank to freeze his locker and asked other banks to provide all details of his accounts.

The cooperative department official has been arrested on the complaint of Sukhbir Singh, who had been managing milk collection tankers deployed by a private firm in the said milk plant.

Giving more details, he added that the complainant had complained to the VB that the above said official of the state cooperative department has been demanding ₹50,000 more in lieu of allocating best routes to his tankers being used to collect milk from different locations. The complainant informed the VB that the said manager had already taken ₹50,000 from him in this regard.

The spokesperson further added that the VB’s Mohali flying squad unit investigated the allegations levelled in the complaint and laid a trap in which the accused manager was arrested red-handed while accepting a bribe of ₹50,000 from the complainant in the presence of two official witnesses.

In this regard, a case under the Prevention of Corruption Act has been registered at the VB police station flying squad-1, Punjab, in Mohali against the accused official. Further investigation in the case was under progress, he said.