A local court remanded Rajkot in charge chief fire officer (CFO), Anil Maru, who was arrested for allegedly taking Rs 1.8 lakh bribe, in three-day custody of the Gujarat Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) Tuesday. ACB produced the 39-year-old officer in a Rajkot court to seek his remand. “The police granted our plea and gave us Maru’s custody till August 16,” ACB police inspector Prakash Dekavadiya, who is the investigating officer in the case, told The Indian Express. Maru was arrested late on Monday based on a complaint after he allegedly demanded and accepted Rs 1.8 lakh bribe from a private contractor in the business of installing fire-fighting equipment. After installing fire-fighting systems in five residential towers, the contractor had approached Maru on behalf of the builders to obtain a no-objection certificate or fire-safety clearance. According to ACB officials, Maru had demanded Rs 5 lakh for granting the clearance certificate but settled for Rs 3 lakh after negotiations. The contractor paid Rs 1.2 lakh to Maru around a week ago, but complained to the ACB as he did not want to bribe the officer. The ACB laid a trap at Maru’s office in the headquarters of the Rajkot Municipal Corporation (RMC) and detained him as soon as he accepted Rs 1.8 lakh in cash from the contractor. Notably, Maru was caught “red-handed” by the ACB exactly three years after his elder brother Amrut Marvada and Amrut’s wife Kanku Marvada, the award-winning Sarpanch of Kutch’s Kukma village, were arrested by the bureau for allegedly demanding and accepting Rs 5 lakh bribe from a mining firm on August 13, 2021 for allowing it to construct a shed. “The ACB has filed a charge sheet in the case against Amrut and Kanku, but the trial is yet to start,” said a senior ACB officer. Incidentally, Kanku was detained by the ACB hours after she shared the stage with top state government officials at an event that was virtually addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The couple was arrested the next day. “His elder brother and sister-in-law were arrested by the ACB for taking bribes in 2021. Therefore, Maru knew the ACB procedure. He is also studying law. So, he acted smartly on Monday and instead of touching the bribe money, he asked the contractor to place it in a rake in his office, telling the latter ‘kagal tyan muki do’ (place those papers there) while not uttering word money or cash,” an ACB officer told The Indian Express. After Maru’s arrest, ACB conducted searches in his office, his rented accommodation in Rajkot city and the family home in Kukma village near Bhuj in Kutch. “We found Rs 53,000 cash from his office. Searches at his rented accommodation in Rajkot and family home in Kukma yielded nothing incriminating,” the officer added. Maru was the fire officer of Bhuj town before the state government deputed him Rajkot CFO, which had fallen vacant after incumbent Ilesh Kher was arrested and suspended in June this year for his alleged involvement in the TRP Game Zone fire case. Maru had assumed charge on June 29. Besides being the Rajkot fire chief, Maru also held the additional charge of regional fire officer having jurisdiction over districts like Rajkot Rural, Devbhumi Dwarka, Jamnagar, Kutch, Morbi and Porbandar, among others.
