Vigilance court denies bail to arrested IAS official

Patna: In a major jolt to suspended IAS official and Mohania SDO Jitendra Gupta, the special vigilance court-I rejected his bail plea on Friday following the prosecution’s claim to have strong circumstantial evidence against the 2013-batch IAS officer indicating his involvement in the graft case. As per the vigilance department’s claim, Gupta was arrested on the basis of confessional statement of his driver Sanjay Tiwary and bodyguard Ashok Kumar Shrivastav, a home guard, who were caught by the vigilance sleuths on July 12 from outside the SDO’s official residence in Kaimur district after accepting a bribe of Rs 80,000 from complainant truck driver Jaspreet Singh.
Special public prosecutor Vijay Kumar Sinha and his colleague Anandi Singh told the court that in course of investigation it was revealed that Sanjay and Ashok were acting on the instructions of Gupta.
According to the case diary, the vigilance team reached outside SDO’s official residence and arrested Sanjay and Ashok after both accepted Rs 80,000 from the truck driver. Later, vigilance sleuths recovered the licence and papers of all the four trucks and their respective drivers from the DCLR’s vehicle parked inside SDO’s residence. The SDO was also in charge of DCLR’s post at that time. These documents were seized by SDO Gupta himself on the morning of July 3 from the drivers. The vigilance later also seized documents of some other vehicles from the confidential office of the suspended SDO.
The SDO has been booked under Section 7, 13(1)d and 13(2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988.
Former minister and senior advocate P K Sahi along with advocate Janardan Rai argued the case as defence counsels. They told the court that the vigilance department has no direct evidence against the arrested IAS official.