2 govt officials held on bribery charges

CHENNAI: The DVAC on Wednesday arrested two government officials near Chennai in separate incidents for demanding and accepting bribes to do their public duties.

In the first case, sleuths arrested a junior assistant who had allegedly demanded Rs 30,000 for processing a CPS bill at Tiruvallur treasury from a retired senior assistant surgeon.

They noted that complainant Dr R Sankar, a resident of Kavangarai near Chennai, had retired in July last year and had prepared a retirement bill benefit for claim from Ponneri GH.

Lokesh Babu, junior assistant, prepared the Surrender Leave bill for Rs 9.7 lakh and allegedly demanded Rs 30,000 as bribe for processing the CPS bill.

After the Surrender Leave bill was passed, and the said amount was credited to Dr R Sankar’s bank account, the latter approached Babu for getting the CPS amount. Babu replied that unless the doctor paid him a bribe of Rs 30,000, he’d not process it.

Unwilling to give the bribe, the doctor approached DVAC and a net was thrown. Babu was caught red-handed on Wednesday taking money.

In a second case, a sub registrar in-charge at Pallavaram was caught in a trap set by the DVAC team for allegedly demanding and accepting a bribe of Rs 200 for giving a registered settlement deed. The arrested official is identified as C Senthilkumar.