Bengaluru: Congress corporator in the can for taking Rs 10 lakh bribe
A BBMP engineer, who accepted a bribe of Rs 5 lakh, was also caught.
Bengaluru: The Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) netted a fairly big fish on Friday with its officers catching Congress Corporator of Rajajinagar ward, J. Krishnamurthy red-handed while accepting a bribe of Rs 10 lakh from a contractor. A BBMP engineer, who accepted a bribe of Rs 5 lakh, was also caught. Both men were arrested and so was a third BBMP engineer, who was not present at the time.
Going by the ACB, the contractor from Andhra Pradesh, who was waiting to be paid Rs. 2.74 crore by the BBMP for a year- and- a-half for the renovation of the Rajajinagar RTO office, had approached Assistant Executive Engineer , Rajajinagar sub-division, Arun Kumar, and Assistant Engineer , Rajainagar ward (number 99) office, Krishna among other officers, to plead his case.
“But they allegedly demanded a bribe. The contractor then approached the ward corporator, Krishnamurthy but he too allegedly demanded Rs. 38.5 lakh to clear the bills and advised him to bring the AEE and AE along with him so they could settle the issue. Krishnamurthy also reportedly promised to clear the bills within a few days of receiving the bribe. But unwilling to pay it, the contractor approached the ACB and filed a complaint,” said an ACB official.
Based on the complaint, the ACB officials laid a trap Friday morning, instructing the contractor to ask the BBMP engineers to accompany him to the corporator’s house in Kurubarahalli and caught him in the act.
But as the AEE was busy, only the AE accompanied him to the corporator's house, where he then proceeded to pay Mr Krishnamurthy Rs 10 lakh and the AE, Rs 5 lakh. "The waiting ACB officials swooped down on them and caught the corporator and the AE accepting the money. Later, the AEE too was arrested," the official added.
Following their arrest, the three men were questioned before being produced before a court, which remanded them to judicial custody. The arrested corporator was himself a BBMP contractor before he contested the corporation elections on a Congress ticket in 2015.
This is the first time a people's representative has been caught accepting such a big bribe in Karnataka. Former BJP MLA, Y. Sampangi was on January 29, 2009, caught accepting a bribe of Rs 50,000 in cash and Rs 4.50 lakh in cheque.
Traps involving BBMP corporators:
December 2012: Then Congress corporator from Sudhamanagar ward, Kumari Avvayi, was caught receiving a bribe of Rs 15,000.
July 2010: Congress corporator of Ganesh Mandir ward, L Govindaraju, was caught accepting a bribe of Rs 2 lakh from a building contractor .