Executive engineer was arrested while accepting bribe from contractor

Anti-corruption officials in Bihar have arrested an official who loved to sleep on a bed of crisp currency notes.

The official, Suresh Prasad Singh, posted as the executive engineer with the Road Construction Department was arrested from Patel Nagar locality of the state capital on Sunday while accepting a bribe of Rs1.4 million (Dh74,021) in cash from a contractor in lieu of awarding a road construction contract.

The vigilance officials who raided his home were surprised to find bundles of Indian currency notes in denominations of Rs2,000 and Rs500 placed under his bed. A total of Rs23.6 million was recovered from under the bed and cupboards during the raids which lasted for several hours.

The vigilance authorities had no idea that the house of the arrested engineer would act like a “cash warehouse”. Reports quoting officials said when the vigilance sleuths began searching for cash at engineer’s residence just every objects, such as beds, almirah, cupboards and suitcases started emitting cash.

The recovered amount of cash was so huge that the vigilance staff got literally tired of counting the pink and yellow-coloured currency notes. Eventually they arranged a currency counting machine from a State Bank of India branch by getting its branch opened on Saturday. As such, all the banks were closed for being the second Saturday yesterday.

The bank again had to be opened in the evening to deposit the recovered cash since it was much beyond the capacity of vigilance bureau’s locker to keep the cash. Authorities said this was the highest-ever recovery of cash from the any corrupt officials in Bihar during the raid.

During the raid, the authorities also stumbled upon several land plots of the engineer in Patna and Noida, huge investment through 26 life insurance policies and also investment in foreign banks.

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