Officers of the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) meticulously planned the trap laid for Palghar’s deputy collector Sanjeev Jadhvar, who was arrested on Tuesday for accepting a bribe to give nod to a tribal land transaction.
To ensure that sufficient evidence is collected against Jadhvar, the ACB team had armed the complainant with a digital voice recorder concealed in his shirt, applied anthracene powder (which produces a red dye) on the currency notes meant to be given to the public servant, and decided upon a coded signal for the ACB team waiting to catch the accused red-handed.
The complainant belongs to a tribal community and had made a transaction to buy land from his community members. To buy and sell tribal land, the Collector’s permission is required. The complainant had duly applied for the permission on September 28, 2022 at the Collectorate, Palghar.
After waiting for two long years, the complainant visited the Collector’s office on August 1 this year, where a clerk demanded a bribe of Rs50,000 on behalf of Jadhvar. Not wanting to pay, he appeared before the ACB to complain.
On Tuesday, ACB officials concealed a digital voice recorded in the shirt worn by the complainant so that the demand for bribe, if any, could be recorded. They also applied anthracene powder on the currency notes and asked the victim to give a signal by putting a sack bag on his shoulder once the bribe money was accepted.
The complainant met Jadhvar, who signalled him to put the money in a file kept on his table in the office. After following the instruction, the complainant left the office and signalled the ACB team by putting his bag on the shoulder, after which the ACB sleuths entered Jadhvar’s office and recovered the bribe money from the file.
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