The CBI’s Anti Corruption Bureau nabbed an Additional Commissioner of Income Tax red-handed while he was accepting a bribe of Rs 4 lakh in his office on Friday evening, and also seized Rs 8 lakh from his office locker.“A month ago, a city-based income tax consultant had approached us alleging that Additional Commissioner of Income Tax R K Gupta has demanded Rs 10 lakh as bribe from him for completing the scrutiny of pending assessment of his company. Despite many pleas by the complainant, Gupta had lowered his final demand to Rs 8 lakh which he asked the consultant to pay in two installments. Gupta had asked the complainant to come with Rs 4 lakh to his office and that’s when we laid a trap and nabbed him,” said CBI Joint Director Rishi Raj Singh. He gave all the credits to the CBI and Abhin Modak for cracking the case.Singh revealed that the CBI team recovered Rs 8 lakh from Gupta’s office. “ Our team is presently conduting an intense search at Gupta’s house and four other locations. Gupta will be produced in the Court of Special Judge for CBI on Satuday,” he said.“Gupta is an IIT Kharagpur graduate and was in the 1994 batch of the Indian Revenue Service. He is the fourth IITian who has been arrested by us,” said CBI Superintendent Pravin Salunkhe.Stressing Gupta’s case has yielded the largest amount of illegal funds ever seized by the CBI, ACB officials said that over 50 per cent of the corruption cases being investigated by them involve gazetted Class I officers. Just a day ago, the officials had also arrested Vilas Prabhakar Narkar, superintendent, Central Excise, Commissionerate-I Thane, and three inspectors B S Sankaran, Sanjay Patakar and Prasanna Namboothiri on Thursday while accepting a bribe to the tune of Rs 1.5 lakh.“We have registered 29 cases this year and 17 of the accused are class I officers and most of them are from departments like Income Tax, Customs, Service Tax, Employees Provident Fund, Directorate of Shipping, Bombay Port Trust, RPF and the Railway Police. Our jurisdiction also extends to Diu and Goa,” said DIG, CBI, Sonali Mishra. She also said that the ACB will be opening a branch in Pune in January 2008. The officials said members of the public may approach CBI with complaints of bribe demands. For complaints, contact 9820185123.
