Mining engineer, middleman caught by ACB for bribery
KOTA: The Kota unit of Anti Corr upt i o n Bureau ( ACB) o n Wednesday arrested a mining engineer and a middleman on the charges of accepting a bribe of Rs 4 lakh.
ACB officials said that mining engineer of Amet (Rajsamand) Gopal Lal Buchh had allegedly demanded Rs 25 lakh from Shravanlal Gurjar of Bhilwara for granting permission to mine granite from a feldspar mine.
On Wednesday, ACB caught middleman Lakshman Dhakar on charges of accepting Rs 4 lakh on behalf of Buchh as the first instalment of the bribe, said Chandra Sheel Kumar, additional superintendent of police, Kota ACB.
Kumar said the bureau had received a complaint from Gurjar in September about the bribe demand. Gurjar told the ACB that he had bought a mining lease of RK Granite and Mineral mines at Narana village under Devgarh tehsil of Rajsamand district from Rajendra Yadav in 2017 and transferred it in the name of his son Chandraprakash Gurjar a year ago.
“The lease was sanctioned for quartz and feldspar mining, but there was prospects of granite mining beneath the mines, so complainant applied at the mining department office in Amet for granit e mining, but when approval was not received, complainant approached mining engineer, Amet, Gopal Lal Buchh on September 12 this year seeking granite mining sanction from Udaipur office,” Kumar said.
ACB TEAMS ARE SEARCHING THE PARENTAL HOUSE OF GURJAR IN BEGUN REGION OF CHITTORGARH AND RESIDENCE IN BHILWARA
Buchh allegedly demanded a bribe of Rs 25 lakh for changing the mining lease from feldspar to granite.
When ACB verified the comp l a i n t , Buchh was found demanding Rs 25 lakh from the complainant at his residence in Bhilwara and settling for Rs 10 lakh before the start of the work, Kumar said.
On September 25, ACB sent Gurjar with Rs 4 lakh to the residence of Buchh in Bhilwara, but he refused to accept the money saying that he should be paid the entire amount of Rs 10 lakh in one instalment. Later, ACB again sent Gurjar to the Buchh’s office in Amet on October 24, when he asked him to hand over Rs 4 lakh to his “business partner” Lakshman Dhakar at his showroom at Bijoliya on KotaChittorgarh National Highway on October 30.
On Wednesday, an ACB team caught Dhankar red-handed while accepting Rs 4 lakh from the complainant, Kumar said. Lat e r , t he ACB t e a m a l s o arrested Gurjar from his residence in Bhilwara district, he added.
ACB teams are searching the parental house of Gurjar in Begun region of Chittorgarh and residence in Bhilwara.