Rs 50 lakh seized in raids at Bihar engineer’s house

Sleuths of the Special Vigilance Wing on Thursday made a major haul...

Sleuths of the Special Vigilance Wing (SVW) on Thursday made a major haul and recovered a whopping Rs 50 lakh in cash during a raid at the residence of a Chief Engineer of Minor Irrigation Department, Awadhesh Prasad Singh.

Apart from the cash, the search operation yielded investment in shares of over Rs 50 lakh, documents establishing ownership of three flats in Noida, Bangalore and Kolkata, two lockers, bank accounts and plots of land.

The recovery of cash left the sleuths dazed as it was stashed all over the posh house in the Shivpuri locality of Patna. “Cash was recovered from the bedroom, kitchen and even the bathroom,” said an officer of the raiding party.

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“An assessment of his total property is yet to be done as the bank lockers have not been opened. We have contacted the engineer and asked him to hand over the keys of the lockers,” said IG, SVW, A K Upadhyay. Upadhyay said a disproportionate assets (DA) case had already been lodged against the engineer and details of the recovery would be presented before the Vigilance court. Sleuths of the SVW carried out simultaneous raids at three establishments of the engineer in Patna, Muzaffarpur and Samastipur.

The SVW was formed by the Nitish Kumar Government by hiring retired CBI officers on contract with the specific purpose of checking corruption among officers of the state through its “operation clean”.

In the recent past, Secretary of the Minor Irrigation Department, IAS officer S S Verma had also become a prey to the SVW and search operations at his establishments had led to recovery of properties worth crores. He stands suspended and a DA case has been lodged against him. The first victim of this newly constituted wing was DG-rank police officer Narayan Mishra.