Ahmedabad cop caught taking Rs 50 lakh bribe

AHMEDABAD: Gujarat anti-corruption bureau (ACB) officials on Thursday caught an assistant sub-inspector of Ahmedabad range police while he was allegedly accepting a bribe of Rs 50 lakh, an official of the agency said on Friday.
ASI Prakashsinh Raol, attached to the rapid response cell (RR cell), was caught red-handed accepting the bribe money at a hotel on Vallabhvidyanagar Road in Anand on Thursday night, the official said.
RR cells work directly under the respective range inspectors general of police.
Recently, based on a tip-off provided by Raol, the RR cell of Ahmedabad range had raided a godown in an industrial area near Khambhat town of Anand and unearthed a racket involving the siphoning off subsidised urea meant for farmers in the state, he said.
During the raid, police found 1,060 bags of urea, worth Rs 2.76 lakh, some 5,000 empty bags and a sewing machine in the godown, a release from the RR cell a week back had stated.
Preliminary investigations revealed that the perpetrators, who were yet to be identified, had illegally acquired government-supplied subsidised urea and were transferring the fertiliser from those bags into other bags to sell them in the market, the release said.
According to the ACB, Raol demanded Rs 60 lakh from the godown owner to not name him as an accused in the FIR, and after negotiations, he had agreed to accept Rs 50 lakh.
“When the accused went to an eatery on Vallabhvidyanagar Road, he was caught red- handed accepting the bribe money,” said an ACB officer.
As the godown owner did not wish to bribe the policeman, a complaint was registered with the ACB, following which a trap was laid at the hotel on Thursday.
In 2020, ACB had caught 307 accused in 198 cases of corruption.