PHED officials sent to jail in bribery case

JAIPUR: Two PHED engineers arrested on Tuesday on the charges of bribery were sent to judicial custody for 14 days on Wednesday.

Public health and engineering department’s additional chief engineer Subodh Jain was caught by the officers of Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) when he was taking a bribe of `5 lakh. Chief engineer RK Meena was arrested later in connection with the case.

Another accused superintendent engineer ChambalNadoti water supply project, Sawai Madhopur, Udaybhan Maheshwari is absconding.

An official said an ACB court sent Jain and Meena to judicial custody till August 2.

The officials were demanding a bribe from SPML Company for liasoning at higher-level to ensure uninterrupted budget allocation and timely approval to bills among others.

The ACB also arrested Prafful Kumar, an employee of Subhash Project and Marketing Limited (SPML), while Aakash Totala, another SPML staff, is being quizzed. They were caught delivering the bribe amount to the official.

An ACB official told HT that Aakash was being interrogated to unearth the whole conspiracy as he has been maintaining the account of miscellaneous expenditure of company office in Jaipur, including the bribe amount paid to officials at different level.

During a search at Jain’s residence, the ACB recovered `9.68 lakh, documents of a plot worth `30 lakh, 12 bank accounts, investment documents besides the bribe amount of `5 lakh.