Visakhapatnam: CBI officers laid a trap and arrested Mumbai-based income-tax commissioner B.B. Rajendra Prasad while he was accepting a bribe of Rs 19.34 lakh from a real estate agent in the city.
The bribe was for giving a favourable order to Balaji Trust, whose trustee is the Essar Group, in an appeal matter.
A case was registered against Prasad and seven others including Essar Group MD Pradip Mittal, group accounts officer Vipin Bajpai, and Shre-yas Parikh, chartered accountant for M/s G.K. Choksi.
The others are real estate agent Suresh Kumar Jain and his relative Manish Jain. All of them were arrested.
Prasad roped in relative to accept bribe amount
According to the CBI, Prasad recently passed an order in an appeal matter favouring a private trust is based in Mumbai.
For giving this favourable order, he allegedly demanded a bribe of Rs 2 crore and wanted the money to be delivered to the relative of a real estate agent in Mumbai, who transferred it to the real estate agent in Visakhapatnam.
Prasad visited Visakhapatnam on leave and allegedly demanded that the real estate agent, Suresh Kumar Jain, deliver part of the money to his residence in the city.
The CBI caught the commissioner with part of the bribe amounting to Rs 19.34 lakh which he had received from Jain.
Both Prasad and Jain were arrested in Visakhapatnam and the others in Mumbai. During the investigation, the remaining amount of Rs 1.50 crore that had been received by Suresh Kumar Jain on behalf of Prasad was also recovered.
Searches were conducted at the offices and residence of the accused in Mumbai and Visakhapatnam, which led to the recovery of several property documents, details of bank accounts, three lockers and several other documents.
Those arrested were produced in the designated court on Wednesday. Further investigation is continuing.
