PCS officer gets three years in jail for bribery

He was caught “red-handed” while accepting Rs 50,000 for issuing an SC certificate.

A local court on Friday sentenced Punjab Civil Service (PCS) officer TK Goyal to three years of rigorous imprisonment in a bribery case from 2010 when he was joint secretary in the scheduled castes/backward classes (SC/BC) welfare department,

Punjab Civil Service (PCS) officer TK Goyal (File Photo)

Currently posted as project director, Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA), in addition to joint secretary, higher education, the 1995-batch officer got bail immediately.

The vigilance bureau had arrested Goyal on September 8, 2010, under the Prevention of Corruption Act, from his office at the Chandigarh civil secretariat on a complaint by George Shambu of Begowal village in Kapurthala district. He was caught “red-handed” while accepting Rs 50,000 for issuing an SC certificate.

VB had sought cancellation

But there were a lot of twists and turns in the case. The VB authorities in 2012 submitted a case closure report in the court, claiming there was no evidence. But the court rejected it, observing that when the agency had successfully conducted the raid, the cancellation report should not have been presented on the grounds that the motive for demand of bribe was “weak”.

The complainant too had challenged the report as wrong and illegal. The case proceeded after the bureau was asked to further probe the matter.

Mohali’s district attorney Gurdeep Singh, who represented the VB, said, “Major evidence against the accused was that he was caught red-handed. The court found him guilty of accepting bribe and awarded him jail sentence along with fine of Rs 12, 000.”