Patna: Bihar Vigilance officials arrested
72 public servants on charge of taking bribe at various places
this year in its continuing drive to rein in corruption.
Properties of a senior IAS official and a treasury
assistant, amassed allegedly through corrupt means, have also
been confiscated under Bihar Special Court Act 2009 this year.
Vigilance ADG P K Thakur said the wing constitued
several raiding squads in 2011 which caught 72 public servants
red handed while accepting bribe at several places in Bihar.
Of those arrested, 12 were officials from state
revenue and land reform department, eight each from health and
home (police) department, six each from HRD and general
administration departments followed by four each from
panchayati raj and urban development depapartments, besides
three from Bihar State Electricity Board.
Thakur said altogether 17 officials arrested in
connection with 11 bribery cases in 2011 have been convicted
and undergoing rigorous imprisonment and slapped fine by
vigilance courts in Bihar this year.
The bureau had arrested 68 public servants in 2010.
with 29 officials involved in train bribery been convicted in
that year, he said.
In an unique exercise against corruption the state
government confiscated the palatial house of suspended IAS
S S Verma and opened a much needed school there on the
outskirts of state capital here, Thakur said.
The government also confiscated the house of
Girish Kumar, the treasury assistant on December 20 last in
Kadamkuan locality and later decided to make the premises
available for opening a residential school by state backward
and extremely backward class welfare department, Thakur said.
The bureau had registered a case against Girish Kumar
in 2006 accusing him of accumulating properties worth Rs 50
lakh disproportionate to his known sources of income. Verma
has been charged with earning properties worth Rs 1.43 crore
disproportionate to his known sources of income.
Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had already sanctioned
confiscation of properties of other 11 public servants on
November 11 last for earning properties through corrupt means,
he said.
The ADG further said among these public servants,
Srikant Prasad was executive engineer of rural works
department division-II in Aurangabad, Patna regional
development authority vice-chairman Kalika Prasad, former
motor vehicle inspector in Aurangabad Raghuvansh Kunwar, Anil
Kumar (sale tax department, Arra), Gaya district municipal
corportion retired revenue officer Yogendra Kumar and a forest
official in Kaimur Bhola Prasad.
They all have been charged with accumulting huge
wealth disproportionate to their known sources of income.
The bureau had also moved several special courts uder
Bihar special court act 2009 against several other public
sevants for confiscation of their properties earned through
alleged corrupt means.
PTI
First Published: Sunday, December 25, 2011, 13:07