2 union leaders held for extorting ₹1.2 lakh from Gurugram civic body contractor
The ACP said that the contractor had alleged that in case of denial, the suspects used to harass him by not allowing him to work
Two union leaders of sanitation workers were arrested for extorting ₹1.25 lakh from a contractor of the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram to allow him to carry out daily sanitation work in the city, police officers aware of the matter said on Wednesday.
According to the police, the prime suspect was Naresh Markat, the state secretary of the sanitation workers’ union. They said the entire amount was recovered from his possession soon after he took it from the contractor on Tuesday.
They said that on Tuesday, Markat was accepting ₹1.25 lakh from the contractor near 32nd Milestone restaurant along NH-48 in Sector 15 when a crime branch team nabbed him.
Investigators said that in the course of interrogation, Markat said that the union’s Gurugram district head, Ram Singh, was also involved in extorting money from the contractor, following which he was arrested after a raid. They said a third suspect, also associated with the two, was presently on the run.
Varun Kumar Dahiya, assistant commissioner of police (crime), said the matter came to light when the contractor submitted a written complaint at the Sector 15 police station against the three suspects.
“He had alleged that these union leaders were continuously extorting money from him. The three had already taken ₹3 lakh from the contractor in the last few months for allowing him to carry out the routine sanitation work of the city area. Now they were demanding ₹1.25 lakh more from him, and it was during this payment that the prime suspect was arrested,” Dahiya said.
The ACP said that the contractor had alleged that in case of denial, the suspects used to harass him by not allowing him and his hired team of workers to collect and transport garbage from the areas for which he was responsible.
Dahiya said that it had come to light during interrogation that the three and some other suspects were putting pressure on the contractor to pay them ₹25,000 per month. “We are investigating to ascertain if other MCG contractors were also clandestinely paying them extortion money out of fear instead of alerting us,” he said.
