Hyderabad: The Anti-Corruption Bureau raided the house of GHMC Circle 12 (Seri-lingampally) deputy executive engineer Maloth Peer Singh on Thursday and unearthed assets worth Rs 7 crore and arrested him. He was sent to judicial custody.
ACB director-general said, “A case of disproportionate assets was registered against the deputy executive engineer. Searches were conducted at his residence at Guttala Begumpet, Hyderabad, as well as at his relatives’ residences at Madhapur, Aryanagar in Nizamabad town and Amrad thanda, Mak-noor (M), Nizamabad.”
The engineering, advertising and town planning wings of GHMC are the top money-making departments. The arrest of Peer Singh underlines this. The DEE had amassed crores while receiving a salary of about Rs 60,000 a month.
The GHMC is divided into five zones, and 24 circles. Each circle has a town planning, advertising, sanitation, engineering and property tax wing. A circle officer heads the office but each wing has its own head.
The engineering section oversees all civic infrastructure works, mainly roads, drains, community halls, footpaths, repairs, construction of compound walls, park development, model markets etc.
Maloth Peer Singh
A source from GHMC said, “In the annual Budget, funds are allocated for each project circle-wise, the engineering wing deals with the design, planning and execution. For instance, to lay a new road for one kilometre, the GHMC spends above Rs 30 lakh and certain engineers make money out of big contracts. However the works are supervised by the assistant engineer too. When a tender is approved, a certain percentage goes to the engineering wing.”
In the case of Peer Singh, ACB DSP, Nizamabad, Narendra Reddy said, “We received complaints that the officer had made money out of contracts and had in-vested it in properties.”
According to ACB records, most cases filed have been against staff from tax and engineering wings of GHMC.
In June 2011, executive engineer G. Chinna Reddy of Circle 8 was caught red-handed by ACB sleuths accepting a bribe of '1.50 lakh. A case was booked but the officer continued to work in the office.
“In many cases, especially vigilance cases, the officials are let off with minor punishments like censure or holding back of increment, or the charges are dropped by the municipal administration and urban development department on instructions of the minister concerned,” said an official from the Vigilance department.
Records of the Vigilance wing and ACB show that 160 employees have been charged in 110 cases being probed by the vigilance and enforcement wing, and another 40 have been booked by ACB in 37 cases since 2010.
In the ACB cases, the employees were either caught red-handed by bureau personnel while accepting bribes or booked for possession of assets disproportionate to their known sources of income.
