Jaipur: An IPS officer was arrested by the Rajasthan anti-corruption bureau on Tuesday in a corruption case.
Manish Agarwal, the former SP of Dausa district allegedly sought a bribe of Rs 38 lakh through his middleman from a construction company that was building a highway in the district.
Agarwal was arrested from his home on Tuesday afternoon and taken to the ACB office in Jhalana area of Jaipur, ACB DG BL Soni said. He said Agarwal was arrested under provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act. ACB officials are searching Agarwal’s house.
This is the fourth arrest in connection with seeking bribe from the highway construction company. The ACB had on January 13 arrested former Bandikui SDM Pinky Meena, former Dausa SDM Pushkar Mittal and tout Neeraj Meena. All three are lodged in jail.
Pinky Meena was caught taking a bribe of Rs 10 lakh while Pushkar Mittal was nabbed taking a bribe of Rs 5 lakh. The two Rajasthan Administrative Service officers have been suspended.
During interrogation of the three accused, Agarwal’s name had cropped up. ACB officials learnt that Neeraj Meena had threatened the company officials and sought a bribe on behalf of Agarwal.
Meena was taking a bribe of Rs 4 lakh from the company each month. He had also taken Rs 10 lakh to close some cases against the company.
After Agarwal’s name surfaced, the government removed him as Dausa SP and attached him to the police headquarters in Jaipur. He was posted as commandant of the state disaster response force.
The ACB had seized Agarwal’s phone and went through his call detail records in which they found conversations between the former SP and the tout, Meena regarding taking of bribe. Based on this, the ACB filed a case against Agarwal and started investigation.
Agarwal is a 2010 batch IPS officer of the Jammu and Kashmir cadre. However, he got his cadre changed after his marriage to an IPS officer from Rajasthan cadre. His first posting was as SP of Barmer in 2018 where he got mired in controversy and was sent on APO three months after the posting. He was then posted as Dausa SP in July 2020. Here too he faced corruption charges when a complaint was filed against him for demanding a bribe of Rs 25 lakh for closing a rape case. The matter is being investigated by the vigilance wing of the police.
