Engineer, Son Arrested With Rs 24 Crore Cash, Gold, Diamonds in Kolkata

Kolkata: A state government engineer and his son were arrested by Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) of West Bengal Police after cash worth over Rs 24 crore and gold ornaments, diamonds worth lakhs were seized from his residence at Bally in Howrah district, an official said today.

Acting on a complaint of bribery from a local builder, ACB sleuths raided Bally Municipality sub-assistant engineer Pronab Adhikary's residence at Malipanchghara of Bali yesterday and recovered bundles of currency notes hidden inside box beds and even the cistern and commode of an unused bathroom and several other places of the house, a senior officer of the unit said today.

Stacks of currency in denominations Rs 1000 and Rs 500 and Rs 100 were also unearthed under floor tiles in one of the six rooms in Adhikary's house and from under the floor of the balcony, the sleuth said.

"We had specific complaints against Adhikary accepting bribes on the basis of which the raid was conducted yesterday.

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And during the raid huge stacks of cash hidden at different places were seized," the officer said.

"Not only cash, gold ornaments worth over Rs 14 lakh, diamonds, innumerable documents of term deposits and fixed deposits were also recovered against which the accused engineer failed to show any supportive documents," he added.

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Police also arrested the 50-year-old engineer's son, an engineering student, for attacking an ACB sleuth during the raid and also for allegedly helping his father in taking bribes.

"We had to face lots of trouble from the locals and some of them even attacked one of our officers mistaking us as robbers. Then force from Malipanchghara police station came to our rescue, cordoned off the house and helped us to carry on the raids," the officer said.

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Meanwhile, asked whether Adhikary's wife had any role in the case, the officer said "We are looking into role of everybody in his family. We have specific information about the role of his family members involved in helping him. But it's still very early to comment anything in this regard."

Incidentally, police have already questioned Adhikary's wife and daughter in this connection. Police, it was learnt, would likely question the ex-chairman of Bally Municipality, to whom Adhikary was allegedly "quite close".

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Asked from where the engineer could have accumulated such huge fund, the police officer said, "This is a deep rooted case. We suspect that he is involved in sanctioning building plans in the fast growing Bally area.

"He (Adhikari) is working in Bally Municipality, which merged with the Howrah Municipal Corporation two months ago, for the past 25 years."

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Adhikary and his son were remanded to three-day police custody (till Monday) when produced at a city court today.