3 ST welfare corporation employees arrested in Bengaluru, Rs 83L seized

Bengaluru: Three employees of a Scheduled Tribes welfare corporation in the city have been arrested and Rs 83 lakh unaccounted money seized from them, an official said on Friday.

"On a reliable tip-off we received on the three employees' activities, we have raided their office to recover the unaccounted money and arrested them," Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) Superintendent of Police Kuldeep Jain told IANS.

Police arrested Karnataka Maharshi Valmiki Schedule Tribes Development Corporation General Manager S. S. Nagesh, office superintendent P. D. Subbappa and assistant general manager Manjula.

The three government employees have been arrested under Sections 7 a, 8, 13 (1) (C) of the Prevention of Corruption Act 1988. Incidentally, the police are yet to find who bribed the employees. "We are still probing who paid the bribe and for what purpose," said Jain.

Police did not find all the Rs 83 lakh in the office itself. Of the recovered money, Rs 22.65 lakh was found in the ST development corporation, Rs 32.8 lakh at the residence of Nagesh and Rs 27.5 lakh in Subbappa's home.

As the protocols of ACB require that an FIR has to be registered before proceeding with a case, Jain said the department registered an FIR on Wednesday.

Later, after procuring a search warrant, they raided the ST development corporation office in Vasanth Nagar on Thursday, resulting in the recovery of the money.

"In ACB, we have to develop our own sources of information, verify the credibility of information, book an FIR first and then take a search warrant. In other police departments, you directly raid and then book and FIR," he said.

Though the real purpose of the bribe is yet to be established, police are suspecting that the trio could have taken the money for some contract. All the three accused were produced in court and taken into police custody.