Mumbai: Food and Drug Administration official ‘caught accepting bribe’

Accordingly, one of the inspectors who conducted the raid sent a report to Mundhada who was the assistant commissioner.

As per the findings of the inspector, a show-cause notice was issued to the owner of the medical shop asking why the shop licence should not be cancelled and judicial proceedings against the shop owner not initiated by the FDA. The shop owner recently met Mundhada, who allegedly demanded a bribe of Rs 40,000 from him for not taking any action against him and closing the file. The complainant, who did not want to make a payment, approached the ACB.

ACB officials verified the complaint on August 12 and found it genuine. They told the shop owner to accept the bribe demand. The complainant agreed to pay Rs 40,000 to Mundhada. On Wednesday morning, as Mundhada was accepting the bribe amount, the ACB officials allegedly caught him red-handed. FDA Joint Commissioner Harish Baijal confirmed that Mundhada had faced two departmental inquiries and one suspension in the past in corruption-related cases.

In another trap laid by the ACB in the city, two sweeper mukadams of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) were caught while allegedly accepting a bribe of Rs 3,000 from a BMC sweeper. As per ACB officials, the two mukadams namely Kanhaiyalal Rathod, 41, and Sandeep More, 34, were responsible for maintaining the attendance register.

After the complainant would mark his attendance with a pen, the mukadams would erase it thereby showing he was absent. They then allegedly demanded Rs 3,000 from him to mark him present. Unwilling to make a payment, the complainant approached the ACB, which caught them red-handed accepting a bribe Wednesday.