The Rajasthan High Court on Friday granted bail to an IAS officer and an IPS officer who were arrested in serious corruption cases over the past year. IAS officer Inder Singh Rao, who was then Baran Collector, was arrested by the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) of the state on December 23 in 2020.
Likewise, IPS Manish Aggarwal, who was then the SP of Dausa was arrested by the ACB in February, 2021 for taking a bribe of Rs 38 lakhs from a company building a highway in Dausa.
The tainted senior officials, accused of corruption, will now be free after spending several months in jail. IAS Rao will come out of jail after eight months and IPS Manish after about six months. Earlier, the two officials did not get bail from the High Court after their arrest.
Recently, however, the government did not give prosecution sanction against the two officers arrested in the case of taking bribes. On this basis, lawyers of both the officers had applied for bail in the Rajasthan High Court. On this pretext, the High Court on Friday finally granted bail and ordered the release of both the officers from jail.
After a major action by the Rajasthan Anti-Corruption Bureau, the-then Baran District Collector and senior IAS officer Inder Singh Rao was found to be involved in demanding a bribe for issuing NOC for a petrol pump. The ACB had caught his PA red-handed receiving a bribe of Rs 1.40 lakh to issue an NOC of the petrol pump. Collector Inder Singh had also cleared the NOC as soon as the PA had got the money.
Similarly, IPS Manish Aggarwal was arrested by the ACB from Jaipur on February 2, 2021 for taking a bribe of Rs 38 lakh from a company building a highway in Dausa under the Bharat Mala project. At the time of his arrest in the bribery case, Aggarwal was in the rank of Commandant in SDRF and was accused of taking a bribe while being the Dausa SP. Before Manish Aggarwal, the ACB had also arrested RAS Pinky Meena, who was Bandikui SDM, for demanding a bribe of Rs 10 lakh and RAS Pushkar Mittal, who was Dausa SDM, for accepting a bribe of Rs 5 lakh in the same corruption case.
Sources in the Rajasthan ACB say that the agency which has been quite pro-active in recent months under it’s DG BL Soni is currently awaiting prosecution sanction from the state and central governments in nearly 400 cases. For IAS and IPS officers the task is even tougher as prosecution sanction is needed from both the state and central governments. In the absence of prosecution sanction, officials are often let off even in high-profile cases in which the agency works hard to successfully trap dubious officials.