Lakhs In A Trunk In Government Officer's Home. Laundered, He Says

Lucknow: The engineer was in the middle of his evening meditation session when a colleague called and told him to turn on the television. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was announcing that in hours, 500 and 1,000-rupee notes would be removed from circulation.

The objective is to rid the country of black money and corruption, the PM said.  Money often associated with illegal activity such as bribery. Money like the Rs 48 lakhs stashed in a steel trunk, under a makeshift settee, in the engineer's bedroom.

"For first few minutes I could not understand," the engineer said, speaking to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity for fear of prosecution.

The engineer, employed by the public works department of Uttar Pradesh state,  said, according to the new agency, "A bribe is not a taboo in a government job."

Demonetized currency can be deposited in banks, but immediate access to those funds is severely limited for now and the government has said it will severely penalize those who deposit amounts that don't match their income. Anyone depositing more than Rs 2.5 lakhs over the next two months will be flagged for tax inspection.

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"Taking this extra money as commission is a necessity" just to meet expected payments and to advance in one's field, the engineer told the Associated Press while  sipping whisky and adjusting the light from an overhead chandelier by remote in his home in Lucknow.

Each festive season, he said, he's expected to offer costly gifts like wristwatches, fine suits and gold pendants to his superiors, and even their sons.  The engineer said the bribes he accepts are most often already written into price estimates for projects like road construction as a so-called commission. "You do not have to ask for it," he said.

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Early in September, an Uttar Pradesh bureaucrat named Ashok Kumar told reporters in the town of Basti, southeast of Lucknow, that he was giving up on becoming a district magistrate because he did not have Rs 70 lakhs to pay the bribe. He was suspended from his job after making the statement, though he never revealed who would have been taking that bribe.

The fight against corruption has been frustrating for retired bureaucrat SP Singh, who spent more than 30 years in the civil service trying to rid government departments of graft. Part of the problem, he said, was that politicians were in cahoots with bureaucrats to keep bribery schemes secret. "A bureaucrat helps an illiterate politician in making money by bending rules. Acting as conduit, he ends up thinking, if a minister can make money why not he," Mr Singh told the Associated Press . "The rot has set in."

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On Tuesday, PM Modi lambasted critics of the demonetization drive by saying they want graft to continue.

"Values in public life are eroding... I see that people in public life are giving speeches in support of corruption and black money. They are brazenly out in open doing so. In any country, erosion in values is the biggest crisis," he said.

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The engineer, despite his initial panic, told the Associated Press that he did manage to find a way to launder his savings. What was it? He won't say.