Patna: A young official in Bihar was arrested taking a bribe a few days before his marriage was to be solemnised, thus spoiling his wedding plans. The marriage was to be solemnised on December 9, with invitation cards having already been distributed among the guests.
The official identified as Satish Kumar and employed as assistant electricity engineer in Muzaffarpur district, was nabbed yesterday as he accepted a bribe of Rs10,000 (Dh539) in exchange for correcting an inflated electricity bill.
Ram Babu Sharma, a farmer from Saraiya block in Muzaffarpur, was shocked to see his inflated power bill but he was more shocked when the officials at the power office asked for a bribe in exchange for revising his power bill downwards. The official had initially sought Rs20,000 for the favour.
But Sharma was to get an even bigger shock when the power utility registered a case of energy theft against him. Left with no other option, the victim decided to pay the bribe to the official concerned to get his power bill ‘corrected’ but not before informing the Vigilance Department.
“The official was arrested while he was accepting a bribe of Rs10,000 as [the] first instalment,” Vigilance Department’s director-general Ravinder Kumar told the media today, adding that the arrested official had been sent to jail.
The arrested engineer, who joined the utility in 2014, got engaged to a young woman from Samastipur district in February this year.
Their marriage was scheduled to be held on December 9.
Reports said the shocked relatives of the arrested official, as well as those of his fiancee, are now facing a dilemma as to how to deal with the present situation.
The problem, according to the young woman’s family, is that her fiance’s arrest on bribery case has conveyed a very wrong message in society.
Satish Kumar is the 106th person to be arrested by vigilance sleuths in the current year. As per an official report, a total of 769 officials have been arrested while taking bribes over the past 10 years.
