BENGALURU: In a major catch, Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) officials trapped a corporator and two engineers of Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) while they were allegedly accepting a bribe of Rs 15 lakh from a contractor on Friday.
This is the first case wherein an elected representative was trapped by the ACB ever since it was set up after disbanding the Lokayukta police wing in March 2016.
According to the ACB in a press release, the arrested are Congress corporator G Krishnamurthy, representing Ward 99 in Rajaji Nagar, BBMP Assistant Executive Engineer Arun Kumar and
Assistant Engineer Krishna, Rajajinagar Sub-division.
They were allegedly accepting bribes of Rs 10 lakh, Rs 2 lakh and Rs 3 lakh, respectively from the contractor, a resident of Basaveshwara Nagar. All the three were arrested and booked under provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act.
Acting on a complaint from the contractor, ACB officials, led by Superintendent of Police Girish, trapped Krishnamurthy at his residence at 10 am along with the two engineers while allegedly accepting the bribes from the contractor.
Sources in the ACB told Express that the contractor was entrusted with the work of renovating the RTO complex at Rajajinagar at a cost of Rs 2.5 crore by BBMP. He completed the work by the end of 2015, but his bills were not cleared for more than a year.
The sources said the corporator and the engineers had allegedly demanded a total bribe of Rs 38.5 lakh from the contractor to get the bills cleared. This included Rs 23.5 lakh for the corporator, Rs 10 lakh for the Assistant Engineer and Rs 5 lakh for Assistant Executive Engineer. They were trapped when they were allegedly accepting the first tranche of payments.
All the three accused were produced before the special court which remanded all of them to judicial custody till April 13.