Thane Deputy Municipal Commissioner Shankar Patole was suspended from service on Saturday after he was arrested by the Anti-Corruption Bureau on October 2 in an alleged bribery case. The agency claims they first caught a private person, Omkar Gaikar, red handed for allegedly accepting a bribe of Rs 25 lakh on the instructions of Patole on October 2. Later in the evening, Patole was also arrested from his Thane office based on technical evidence, in which Patole was found speaking with the complainant, a private developer, allegedly demanding bribes and instructing Gaikar to accept the money, a senior police officer said. Following the complaint, the agency also conducted an investigation and learnt that on Patole's instruction, Rs 10 lakh bribe was transferred in the bank account of a private person, Sushant Surve in July. The ACB also arrested Surve on Friday and he was produced in the court and remanded in police custody till October 6. Patole and Gaikar both were again produced in the court on Saturday and their police custody was extended till October 6. The suspension order was issued by municipal commissioner Saurabh Rao on Saturday, exercising the powers conferred under Rule 4 of the Maharashtra Civil Services (Discipline and Appeal) Rules, 1979. Rao has suspended Patole, a deputy commissioner, Zone-1 with effect from October 2. Disciplinary action has also been initiated against Patole, said a senior Thane municipal commissioner official. The ACB claims that the complainant, a private developer, has been developing a property in Thane and approached the TMC to remove three illegal structures on the plot. Patole was on deputation in TMC, holding the charge of the anti-encroachment department. Patole allegedly demanded Rs 25 lakh in July to take action against the illegal structures. He allegedly accepted the first instalment of Rs 10 lakh from the developer in Surve’s bank account. In September, Patole increased the bribe amount from Rs 25 lakh to Rs 50 lakh after which the complainant approached the ACB and registered a complaint. The ACB laid a trap on September 30 in Mulund where Patole was supposed to come to accept the bribe amount but instead asked the complainant to meet him in Thane on October 1 morning. The ACB again laid a trap but he did not turn up and said his person would meet him in the afternoon. The trap was laid for a third time and ACB managed to nab Omkar Gaikar when he came to accept the second instalment of the bribe amount. Based on the recording of the conversation in which Patole instructed the complainant to hand over the bribe amount to a private person, Patole was arrested in the evening, said ACB.
