PUNE
Deputy collector (tenancy) Kiran Bapu Mahajan, who was arrested for accepting bribe at Pune Zilla Parishad office, was under the scanner of Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) since June.
Deputy collector (tenancy) Kiran Bapu Mahajan, who was arrested for accepting bribe at Pune Zilla Parishad office, was under the scanner of Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) since June. However, the ACB sleuths were finding it difficult to trap him because of the elaborate precautions he used to take.
Finally, Mahajan deviated from his carefully devised modus operandi on Wednesday night that landed him in the dragnet.
The officials of the ACB claimed that their several traps laid to catch Mahajan had been foiled as he would conduct a recce of the meeting venue before meeting the briber. Also, he would call off the meeting if he found anything suspicious there.
Sanjeev Gawade, the complainant, had approached the ACB in June. On getting his complaint, the ACB officials talked to him in detail as they needed his cooperation till the end to trap Mahajan.
Gawade wanted to buy a 10-acre plot in Khand village. Mahajan, who was also in-charge of tenancy matters, demanded money from Gawade to clear the land as per the new tenancy rules of the state government.
Sources in the Pune ACB told DNA, “Trapping Mahajan was difficult because he would never talk to Gawade himself about the bribe. He always made his clerk Rajesh Randive do the talking. A few meetings were sought to trap him, but Mahajan would conduct recce of the venue and if he noticed any stranger loitering around, he would just refuse to go for the meeting.”
A senior ACB official, who spoke to DNA on condition of anonymity, said, “Since Mahajan never spoke to Gawade about the bribe, we were finding it difficult to prove his direct involvement. But on Wednesday, he himself called Gawade and demanded bribe of Rs2 lakh. The two agreed to meet at his office in the night where Gawade was to hand over the money to Mahajan.”
“Gawade went to Mahajan’s office on the third floor of Zilla Parishad building around 7.30 pm on Wednesday while our team waited on the second floor. After Gawade gave the money to Randive, our officers went there and caught him red-handed,” the official added.
To execute the plan successfully, the ACB had to take Gawade into confidence and teach him tactics. Moreover, the ACB officials never asked Gawade to meet them in their office fearing that Mahajan would come to know about it and get alarmed.
Deputy commissioner of police (ACB) Sarang Awad told DNA, “Our deputy superintendent of police Rajendra Galande and members of his team have worked hard to trap Mahajan. They took the complainant into confidence because of which he stood firm on his stand.”
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