E-Paper
Rajasthan’s anti-graft body busts extortion racket in transport department
Eight officers and seven agents have been detained so far after the ACB carried out raids in multiple locations.
The Rajasthan Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) on Sunday busted an extortion racket involving transport officials and agents who used to blackmail transport company owners, its top official said.
ACB’s Director General (DG) Alok Tripathi said that search operations were carried out at multiple locations of seven transport officers on Sunday after a four-month long surveillance. An amount of Rs. 1.20 crore in cash and documents of multiple properties and records of deals were seized from them.
Eight officers and seven agents have been detained so far.
“Four months back, we received complaints from transport company owners that the District Transport Officers through middlemen were collecting monthly bribes from them by threatening them of cancelling their registrations. Technical and manual investigations were carried out to verify information,” said Tripathi.
During investigation, the allegations were found true. “The ACB found that the transport officials were extorting money every month from those who run commercial vehicles. They would threaten them of cancelling licenses if they refused to pay. We then laid a trap,” the DG added.
On Sunday, the ACP was tipped off that the agents who had extorted money would distribute it to DTO officials.
Additional director general (ADG) ACB Dinesh MN said that 17 teams were created which raided 13 locations in Jaipur city, three in the outskirts and one in Rewari in Haryana.
“During raids, transport inspector Udaiveer Singh was caught taking Rs 40,000 from agent Manish Mishra. Similarly, other agents were also caught distributing money,” said Dinesh MN.
The ADG said that DTO Shahjahanpur Gajendra Singh, DTO Chomu Vinay Bansal, DTO Jaipur head quarters Mahesh Sharma, RTO inspector Shivcharan Meena, Udaiveer Singh, Alok Budhaniya and Ratan Lal were detained and would be arrested later.
“Similarly, agents Jaswant Singh Yadav, Vishnu Kumar, Mamta, Bunty, Manish Mishra, Ranveer, Vishnu Kaushik and Pavan alias Pehalwan were also detained,” said the ACB ADG
