C’garh: 5 PWD Officers Arrested for Irregularities in Road Construction, Exposed by Slain Bijapur Journo

Raipur: Five officers of state public works department (PWD), two of them now retired, have been arrested for alleged irregularities in the construction of a road in the Leftwing extremism-hit Bijapur district in Chhattisgarh, exposure of which had led to killing of a local journalist seven months ago, police said on Wednesday.

Those arrested were two retired executive engineers (EE), one serving EE, a sub-divisional officer (SDO) and a sub-engineer, police said.

“Five PWD officers including two retired EEs were arrested in connection with the low-quality works in a road construction project undertaken in Bijapur district. They were produced in the local court on Tuesday which remanded them to judicial custody for two days”, Bijapur district additional superintendent of police (ASP) Chandrakar Governa told this newspaper.

Three other officers of the department, one of them now retired, charged with committing irregularities in implementation of the road project have obtained anticipatory bail.

A local journalist in Bijapur, Mukesh Chandrakar (32), was murdered after he exposed poor quality works and corruptions in the construction of Gangaloor- Mirtur- Nelsnar road seven months ago.

Chandrakar, who had lost his parents in his childhood and developed passion for journalism, had filed a series of news stories in some publications and news portals exposing corruption in the construction of the 54.2 km road in the Naxal-hit region days before he went missing on January one this year.

His body was recovered from a septic tank in a property owned by a contractor, Suresh Chandrakar, who was executing the road project, on January five this year.

Later, Suresh along with his two brothers, Ritesh and Dinesh, and their supervisor Mahendra Ramteke were arrested in connection with the murder.

An 11-member special investigation team (SIT) was constituted to probe the case.

The SIT had already filed a 1,241-page chargesheet in the district court in the case.

The chargesheet has named Suresh, his two brothers and their supervisor.