Governmnet auditor held for graft

AURANGABAD: The anti-corruption bureau on Tuesday arrested Pratap Madhavrao Shinde (43), additional auditor, cooperative societies, special audit department, Aurangabad, and another person, Sudeep Deviraj Hivarale (24), for taking a bribe of Rs 2 lakh from a contractor engaged by a cooperative housing society.
According to Vivek Saraf, deputy superintendent of police (ACB), the complainant has got the contract for construction of houses on a plot owned by a cooperative housing society.
The government has appointed Shinde to audit the cooperative society's records. Accordingly, Shinde collected all the documents pertaining to the society. He noticed some anomalies in the files and issued a notice to its chairman, asking him to provide clarifications, police said.
When the society chairman approached Shinde with the clarification, he asked him to bring the contractor along. When the duo approached him, Shinde demanded Rs 5 lakh bribe for withdrawing the notice, giving a favourable audit report, not cancelling the contract and for not filing an FIR for violation of norms. The contractor paid Rs 2.5 lakh. The auditor asked the contractor to bring the remaining Rs 2.5 lakh on October 17.
The complainants, however, approached the anti-corruption bureau, following which the contractor bargained with the auditor, who agreed to accept Rs 2 lakh on Tuesday. The ACB sleuths arrested Shinde who accepted the bribe through Hivarale around 12.30pm in the presence of witnesses.