Rail official takes high end phones as bribe, arrested

CBI has arrested a Deputy Chief Engineer of East Central Railways from Hajipur in Bihar for allegedly taking high end smartphones as bribe from contractors to clear their bills.
Shailendra Kumar Gupta, Deputy Chief Engineer, Bridge & Line, East Central Railways, Hajipur; Manas Rawat, Director of Rawat and Sons Engineers Pvt Limited based in Kolkata and another private person Gourang Chakraborty were arrested for graft.
It is alleged Gupta demanded illegal gratification on various occasions in lieu of processing of bills, awarding of tenders, facilitating award of other sub-contracts, sorting out measurement and variation issues in the work in Koilwar, Kuil, 7DB sectors of East Central Railways, CBI spokesperson said.

"After the registration of the case, a trap was laid and the Deputy Chief Engineer was caught red handed while accepting a Samsung Galaxy Note 5 with 64 GB memory from the contractor," she said.
The official said simultaneous searches were conducted at the office and residential premises of the accused and private contractors at Patna, Kolkata and Hajipur, which led to recovery of incriminating documents and cash worth around Rs eight lakh.
"The alleged bribe paid by the conduit of said Director of private company to the Deputy Chief Engineer at his residence for facilitating the clearance of their bills has also been recovered from his residence," she said.

The spokesperson said further investigation was in progress on the allegations that certain engineers of Engineering and Construction Wing of Indian Railways in connivance with private contractors were adopting various modus operandi like facilitating award of engineering related contracts of the Railways to favourable contractors.
They were allegedly sorting out of deficiencies in the measurements of various ongoing works in favour of the contractors; billing for some fictitious items of works expediting the processing of the bills of favourable contractors etc, the spokesperson added.