The CBI has arrested a Chief Administrative Officer of North East Frontier Railway (NFR), Maligaon (Assam), a Deputy Chief Engineer, an Assistant Executive Engineer of NFR, an employee of private company based at Guwahati (Assam) and a private person (relative of the arrested CAO) in a case related to alleged bribery of Rs  1 crore.

The agency recovered Rs 2.39 crore in cash during searches at 26 locations, including Delhi. Uttarakhand, Assam, Tripura and West Bengal, linked to the five accused persons.

The arrested accused are the CAO Mahendra Singh Chauhan, Deputy Chief Engineer Hem Chand Borah, Assistant Executive Engineer (AEN) Lamxi Kant Verma, an employee of ABCI Infrastructures Pvt. Ltd. Bhupendra Rawat and private person Indra Singh.

“The total amount of Rs 2.39 crore was recovered. The  searches includes an alleged bribe of Rs 1 crore, which exchanged hands on Sunday. During searches, a sum of Rs 18.5 lakh and Rs 6.5 lakh have been recovered from the premises of Deputy Chief Engineer and Assistant Executive Engineer (AEN) respectively. In addition, Rs 60 lakh was recovered from Dehradun and Rs 54 lakh from Guwahati premises of CAO, on Sunday. Besides this, there has been recovery of jewellery and documents related to property from these locations,” the CBI said in a statement.

Earlier, the CBI had registered a case against the accused persons and unknown others under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and Prevention of Corruption Act.

It was alleged that the accused were abusing their official position for obtaining illegal gratification. It was further alleged that the arrested director of the private company was in contact with the CAO in various on-going projects in the NFR region. It was also alleged that on his demand, the said Director, through his employee, delivered a bribe of Rs.1 crore to the relative of said CAO at his residence in Dehradun. “The accused allegedly exchanging bribe money were caught yesterday. The alleged bribe of Rs One  crore was recovered,” it said. .

The agency had on Sunday busted a major corruption racket. It was alleged that some senior public functionaries of NFR were involved in corrupt practices with private contractors for the on-going projects under the division. The contractors were allegedly being facilitated in awarding the contracts, processing of subsequent bills and release of payments by the public functionaries in lieu of bribe, it further said adding investigation and searches are continuing.