4 MSEDCL officials caught taking bribe

Four officers of Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Ltd (MSEDCL) were arrested by the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB), while accepting bribe, in two different cases.

ACB officials of Pune division arrested an executive engineer and junior engineer of MSEDCL red-handed while accepting bribe amount of Rs50,000 and Rs5,000 respectively from an electrical contractor to grant a electricity connection to him.

The arrested executive engineer has been identified as Bhanudas Bhagwantrao Bhosale (56) and junior engineer Sadashiv Chandar Sarpale (54), both working at MSEDCL office at Padmavati. The contractor Anil Sampat Shilimkar (32) of Ambegaon had got a contract from one Rajesh Yadav to supply electricity to his construction site at Ambegaon Budruk. Following which, Shilimkar had applied for a new connection at Padmavati office.

Shilimkar had lodged a complaint with ACB on Monday, deputy commissioner of police Sarang Awad of ACB said.

“While Bhosale had demanded Rs50,000 his colleague Sarpale had already taken Rs15,000 for the same matter. As per our plan, Shilimkar went to Padmavati office on Wednesday afternoon to hand over the amount to Bhosale. We arrested Bhosale red-handed. Later our second team arrested Sarpale who was accepting the remaining amount of Rs5,000 at the same office on Wednesday afternoon.”

In another case, MSEDCL’s deputy executive engineer Prashant Dattatray Parate and junior engineer Laxmikant Gangaram Gondale were arrested while accepting Rs25,000 and Rs20,000 respectively to grant new electricity connections to a private electrical contractor at Dhankawadi office. The contractor Nitin Ramesh Mule (37) of Dhankawadi had lodged a complaint on Tuesday.

Parate and Gondale separately demanded bribe from Mule. Parate had demanded Rs25,000 while Gondale demanded Rs20,000 to sanction the new connection.

According to Awad, laying traps was tough. “It was a tough for our teams to maintain secrecy of the operation. We set separate timings for the traps and accordingly officials acted on it.”

ACB’s appeal
Pune ACB has urged people to come forward and lodge complaints against government officers asking for bribe. For people’s convenience, ACB has started working on holidays too, sources said. People can call these for their complaints: 020- 26122134, 26128891 and 26132802.