4 held by Surat ACB in 3 different cases of accepting bribes for carrying out government duty

In the first case, the ACB sleuths laid a trap to catch red-handed a civilian, Kapil Prajapati, from the Yogi Chowk area in Surat. He was accepting a bribe of Rs 2 lakh from the complainant on behalf of Naresh Jani, the Assistant Director of the Mines and Minerals department. Sources in the ACB’s Surat unit said Jani had demanded a bribe for not harassing the complainant with raids.

The ACB also added that the complainant, a contractor, holds a mining license. While Prajapati has been booked, Jani is absconding. A manhunt is on to trace his whereabouts, said a senior ACB official.

In the second case, acting on a complaint, Surat ACB officials caught two clerks of the Assessment department of the Udhna Zone of the Surat Municipal Corporation while accepting a bribe amount of Rs 35,000 from the complainant on Tuesday.

The arrested clerks have been identified as Jignesh Patel and Mehul Patel. The ACB sources said the SMC carries out assessment of houses after every three years to review the property taxes. The complainant was a regular property tax payer. But when the clerks reached his house for an assessment, they told him that he had made changes in the house and the property tax amount may go up. The clerks also demanded Rs 35,000 from the complainant in order to continue in the same tax slab.

The clerks were booked under different sections of the Prevention of Corruption Act.

In the third incident, sleuths of the Surat unit of the ACB arrested a contractor for electric works, Dinesh Karanchiwala, for accepting a bribe amount of Rs 12,300 from a person in the Umargam taluka of Valsad district on Tuesday.

According to ACB sources, the complainant, a resident of Umargam town, wanted a temporary electric meter for two years for plots in the town. He came in contact with Karachiwala, who also runs Kavita electrical shops just opposite the Dakshin Gujarat Vij Company Limited (DGVCL) office in Umargam.

Karachiwala told the complainant that in order to get the temporary electric meters for two years, he has file an online application with the DGVCL and submit quotations and fees worth Rs 22,690 and a separate amount of Rs 12,300 as bribe for the executive engineer of the DGVCL posted at Umargam.

Karachiwala was caught red-handed while taking the bribe amount of Rs 12,300 from the complainant.

He was brought to the ACB office and booked under different sections of the Prevention of Corruption Act.

R R Chaudhary, Surat ACB Assistant Director, said, “We will try to find out if Dinesh Karachiwala has any understanding with the executive engineer of the DGVCL.”