CHENNAI: The Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC) has booked a joint director in the Commissionerate of Social Welfare and six others, who allegedly demanded bribes from various district social welfare officers and programme officers of the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) to clear allegations against them.
The accused, S Revathy, is the joint director, Nutritious Meal Program, Commissionerate of Social Welfare. Revathy entered into a conspiracy with six others to obtain bribes from subordinate officials, said a DVAC statement. “She abused her position to gain undue pecuniary advantage, by fabricating false petitions of corruption/irregularities against said district level programme officers, and then contacted these officers... offering her support in closing these petitions by way of a favourable departmental enquiry,” it added.
On this pretext, she allegedly demanded and accepted huge bribes directly and through six others. She engaged middleman R Govindarajan, who was working in Galaxy Office Automation Pvt, Anna Salai to collect a major portion of the bribe on her behalf, and four others — S Rajkumar, Kalicharan, Andrew Larson, Babu, and B Vinayagamoorthy — to do the same, the DVAC said.
Revathy persuaded some of the ICDS programme officers in her department to transfer money into bank accounts of the five middlemen, who, in turn, sent a part of the bribe amount to Govindarajan’s bank account, and a part to Revathy. Finally Govindarajan wirhdrew the money from his account and paid most of it in cash to her, the DVAC said.
Revathy and others were booked under the IPC and Prevention of Corruption Act. The matter was taken up for investigation by K Yuvaraj, Deputy Superintendent of Police, DVAC.