Top Railway official, 5 others held for graft

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, February 11

The CBI has arrested the Principal Chief Material Manager, Chittranjan Locomotive Works, Railways, West Bengal, and five others, including directors of a private company based in Chandigarh, in an alleged bribery case.

A case was registered against Ravi Shehkar Sinha, Principal Chief Material Manager, and five others, including Sonu Arora and Rajan Gupta, both directors of M/s EC Blades and Tools Private Ltd, Chandigarh.

It was alleged that the two directors of the private company based in Chandigarh, being approved vendor of Chittranjan Locomotive Works, were in a conspiracy with senior officers of the Railways for obtaining undue favours from them in the award of contract and passing of bills by paying them illegal gratification. The suspects allegedly engaged a person of another company, Praveen Vyas, as a representative of their company to negotiate with senior railway officers, including the Principal Chief Material Manager, for obtaining undue favours for their company.

It was alleged that the suspects persuaded the Principal Chief Material Manager to enhance the order quantity of a contract (earlier awarded). It was also alleged that the public servant enhanced the order quantity in the supply order and demanded a bribe to be delivered to him through Praveen. The employees of Praveen — Pawan Kumar Singh and Vinod Kumar — were also involved in the case.

It is alleged that the directors of the private company handed over an amount to an employee of Praveen and gave directions to deliver Rs1.80 lakh to the Principal Chief Material Manager.

The CBI laid a trap and apprehended the Principal Chief Material Manager while taking a bribe of Rs1.80 lakh from a private person. After the trap, all other suspects, including the directors of the private company, were also apprehended.

CBI sleuths then carried out searches at 17 places in Delhi, Panchkula, Chandigarh, Varanasi and Chittranjan on the premises of the suspects. An amount of nearly Rs1.22 crore, nearly 500 gm of gold and documents pertaining to properties in Delhi, Noida, Gurugram, Hyderabad, Patna and Ranchi were seized from the premises of the Principal Chief Material Manager. An amount of nearly Rs32 lakh and incriminating documents were seized from the premises of the other suspects.

Both arrested directors of the private company were produced before the Special Judge, CBI, Chandigarh, and remanded in three-day police custody. The other four suspects were produced in courts and granted transit remand for further production before the competent court in Chandigarh.

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