The Mumbai Unit of Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) have caught a fire brigade officer for allegedly demanding a bribe from a person in order to give required permissions to a hotel for which the complainant was liasoning. Interestingly, the accused public servant after accepting the bribe money got suspicious after which he went home and flushed the bribe money (Rs 60000) in the toilet. The ACB team managed to recover Rs 57000 from the drainage chamber of the building.
According to the ACB,the complainant is working as a Liaison Officer in a private company. A hotel owner in Borivali West had given the work of PNG connection and no-objection certificate of his hotel to the complainant. The complainant had applied online for the said works on the Brihanmumbai Fire Brigade portal. After that, the complainant met public servant Prahlad Shitole, Senior Centre Officer with the Fire Brigade department, at his Dahisar office.
Shitole had then visited the site of the hotel for which the complainant had applied online. At that time, Shitole typed 1.30 on the calculator of his mobile phone to give PNG connection and no-objection certificate to the complainant and demanded a bribe of Rs 1.30 lakh. When the complainant informed about the same to his superior, the latter said that it was not possible to pay the said amount. Accordingly, when the complainant again met Shitole on 28/08/2024, the latter again typed 80 on the mobile calculator and demanded Rs 80,000 as bribe.
As the complainant did not want to pay a bribe, on 29/08/2024 he visited the ACB Mumbai office and filed a complaint against the public servant. Pursuant to the complaint received, during the verification conducted on 29/08/2024, it was revealed that Shitole had demanded Rs 80,000 and agreed to accept Rs 60,000. Accordingly, during the trap operation on 30/08/2024, Shitole allegedly accepted the bribe amount of Rs 60000 in the office lift from the complainant. But as Shitole became suspicious, he went to his house which is on the fourth floor of the same building and flushed the bribe money in the toilet with the intention of destroying the received bribe money.
However, the ACB team found the said bribe money from the drainage chamber of the building, out of the accepted amount Rs 57,000 amount of bribe was recovered and seized. He was later produced before the court and was remanded to ACB custody.
