Over Rs 45 lakh seized from PWD engineer arrested in bribery case

GUWAHATI: The Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (D&VAC) on Friday seized over Rs 45.54 lakh from the residence and the government quarters of a public works department (roads & buildings) executive engineer at Haflong in Dima Hasao district, who was arrested on Thursday in a bribery case.
The executive engineer, Manuj Kumar Saikia, was caught red-handed by the vigilance sleuths while accepting a bribe of Rs 10,000 from the complainant.
The vigilance cell in a press statement said Saikia had initially demanded Rs 55,000 from the complainant for releasing his pending bills. "However, the engineer scaled down the amount to Rs 25,000 after negotiation. Unwilling to pay the bribe, the complainant approached this directorate," the statement read.
The directorate laid a trap on Thursday in the office of the executive engineer, PWD(R&B) Haflong division, Dima Hasao district, and caught Saikia red-handed at his office immediately after he accepted Rs 10,000.
Following the arrest, the vigilance sleuths conducted a raid at his residence in Nagaon and official quarters at Haflong on Friday. During the search, a cash amount of Rs 44,51,835 was recovered by the team from his residence in Nagaon and Rs 1,02,550 was recovered from his government quarters at Haflong.
Earlier this month, the vigilance sleuths caught two Assam police sub-inspectors. Sub-inspector (UB) Mukundra Upadhyay, who is posted at Laharighat police station in Morigaon district, was caught red-handed on August 10 and sub-inspector (UB) Nizam Uddin Bhuyan of Barpeta police station in Barpeta district while accepting bribes.
With the arrest, the vigilance and anti-corruption cell has arrested over 50 government officials of different ranks in bribery cases this year so far. Overall, the directorate of vigilance and anti-corruption arrested over 100 public servants along with a few middlemen from May 10, 2021 till date. The directorate had arrested 13 public servants in 2021 and 56 last year.
After forming the government, CM Himanta Biswa Sarma has waged a war on corruption by government employees. D&VAC ADGP Surendra Kumar said the directorate has been relentlessly working to mitigate corruption in government offices and has succeeded to a great extent in the last two years. "People have also shown their trust in us and cooperated with us in the effort to end corruption," he added.
He said the D&VAC has made available a control room number, a telephone number and a WhatsApp number for the people to lodge complaints regarding corruption and the numbers can be reached 24x7. People can also write to the dedicated e-mail id or post it on X (formerly Twitter) or the Instagram handle of the D&VAC to lodge a complaint.