ACB nabs officer with Rs25 lakh bribe in Ahmedabad

The anti-corruption bureau (ACB) on Saturday caught a class II officer of the commercial taxes department red-handed accepting a bribe of Rs25 lakh. The officer was taking the bribe from the owner of a Vatva-based industrial unit in return for a ‘Labor VAT’ waiver.

ACB sleuths arrested GK Raval after spending three days laying a trap to catch him taking the bribe. The police also have an audio-recording, a video recording and the marked currency notes that were paid as bribe. ACB laid the trap to snare Raval after Bharat Patel, proprietor of Techno Industries Ltd, approached ACB four days ago.

Raval had slapped a notice on Patel for Rs1.66 crore ‘Labour VAT dues’ that had not been paid. He referred to judgments of several courts and summoned Patel with the demand that he pay the pending Labor VAT dues.

After much haggling and with the help of a mediator, Patel was told to opt for the middle path and cough up Rs75 lakh as bribe.
“Finally, a deal was clinched for Rs45 lakh and the first installment was to be paid on Saturday evening near the Gandhigram railway station,” Singh said.ACB sleuths were able to caught Patel taking the bribe at the railway station.

ADGP (ACB), Chitranjan Singh, said this was probably the first operation where ACB had nabbed a senior officer with such an amount of bribe money.