A systematic ring of collecting Rs 60 crore bribe over seven years was being run by half a dozen railway officers in the north-east by taking the ill-gotten money deposited in bank accounts of their relatives and friends, CBI investigations have revealed.
Officials of an infrastructure company, Bhartia Infra Projects Limited, used to deposit the bribe money — ranging from Rs 8 lakh to Rs 1 lakh — in select bank accounts connected to corrupt railway officials in Guwahati as a reward for smoothly passing their contract bills.
“Eighteen bank entries related to bribe payments have been identified so far and these have been found to be linked to seven different railway officials,” said an investigator.
The bribe payment was so institutionalised in the office that between May 1, 2016 to December 30, 2023 Rs 60 crore bribe was taken by seven allegedly corrupt railway officials posted in Guwahati office of the railways, said an investigator.
The seven officials under CBI’s scanner are deputy chief engineer Rampal, executive engineer Jitendra Jha, B. Lashkar, senior section engineer Rituraj Gogoi, Dhiral Bhagwati, Manoj Saikia and Mithun Das.
Investigation has revealed that the officials helped the infra company get the contract for Northern Frontier Railway project between Jiribam and Imphal. The project involves the construction of multiple tunnels, totaling a length of 61.32 km. Additionally, the project encompasses 11 major bridges and 137 minor bridges.
The CBI probe has also revealed that some officials used to take bribes in small quantities, ranging between Rs 1 lakh to Rs 2 lakh, but at short intervals of one or two months while others preferred to take a single instalment of bribe that used to be around Rs 8 lakh.
Among the frequent bribe taker was Jitendra Jha who took instalments of Rs 1 lakh and Rs 1.5 lakh on six occasions between September 2021 and March 2022 in the bank accounts of his three children – Prasoon Kumar Jha, Aditya Jha and Sambhavi Jha.
While Jha preferred taking bribe in small installments, another officer B. Lashkar took the biggest one-time bribe amount of Rs 8 lakh on November 18, 2022 in the bank account of his friend Asad Ahmed, said a CBI investigator.
Railway officer Rituraj Gogoi took Rs 10 lakh bribe in his wife Swapnil’s bank account in three installments – Rs 2 lakh, Rs 5 lakh and Rs 3 lakh.
Searches were conducted at 16 places in Assam, Tripura, Manipur and Delhi at the premises of accused. This led to recovery of incriminating documents related to the case and investment/acquisition of property by the accused.
