RI held while taking bribe

Bhubaneswar: Odisha Vigilance on Tuesday apprehended a Revenue Inspector (RI) while demanding and accepting a bribe of Rs 3,000 from an applicant, officials said. Acting on a complaint, Vigilance sleuths nabbed Alan Behera, RI of Saintala revenue circle in Balangir district, while receiving the bribe from the applicant (complainant) to process the file and submit a field enquiry report to the competent authority for conversion of his agricultural land to homestead land in a mutation case, officials said. The person had applied online for conversion of his agricultural land on September 7. Despite several requests, the accused RI was not initiating the process and was demanding a bribe, he said. Behera demanded Rs 6,000 bribe for initiating the process and issuance of homestead ROR in favour of the applicant.

When the applicant expressed his inability to pay the demanded bribe, the revenue inspector reduced the bribe amount to Rs 3,000, the official said. Feeling aggrieved and unable to meet the demand (bribe), the applicant approached the Vigilance authorities and the RI was arrested with the bribe money, he added.

Following the trap, simultaneous searches were launched at two locations of Behera to detect any disproportionate assets accumulated by him. In this connection, the Sambalpur Vigilance police station registered a case under the Prevention of Corruption (Amendment) Act, 2018.

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