Patna: Anti-corruption sleuths in Bihar have booked a senior woman official who loved to count cash and invest her ill-gotten money in real estates.
The 54-year-old Bihar Administrative Service official Jayashree Thakur currently posted as the additional district magistrate in the eastern city of Bhagalpur had stashed around Rs200 million (Dh12 million) in over 65 bank accounts with various public and private sector banks and purchased 48 acres of land from the black money, according to the sleuths.
She is the first woman official to be raided by the anti-corruption sleuths in the state.
The Economic Offences Wing of the state police probing the disproportionate assets case against the woman official was amazed to the large amount of money in her various bank accounts, including three with the Bank of Baroda alone, with Rs70.8 million stored there.
She had stashed another Rs70.3 million in a cooperative society bank run by women. The cash recovery from her is the biggest among all those corrupt government servants raided by the EOW.
The anti-graft sleuths were further startled when they found another Rs2.3 million forcibly stashed in two of her lockers in Axix bank.
Authorities said she initially tried to conceal facts when asked to hand over all her bank passbooks but, on being threatened to be sent to jail, she later pointed towards a big locker-type hole made in the wall of her house where all these bank passbooks had been safely concealed. Of the total 65 passbooks, 40 had showed more than Rs100,000 stored there.
During the intensive raids which lasted for two days, the raiding teams also stumbled upon land deeds which showed she owned 48 acres of lands in various parts of the state and outside.
EOW sources said she had purchased most of her lands while she was posted as the land acquisition officer during her previous posting in Banka district. The sleuths have also seized ornaments worth over Rs4.8 million from her possession.
A few days earlier, the sleuths had booked another such corrupt official Radha Krishna Yadav from whose possession 230 gold earrings and tops, 53 finger rings, 30 chains and six necklaces weighing around 1.5kg, all made of gold, was recovered during the raids. The raiding teams also seized silver jewellery weighing 9kg from him. The said official is currently posted as the deputy director of the secondary education department in state.
Nitish Kumar in his second term as the chief minister of Bihar has declared a war on corruption and in the following raids conducted by the anti-graft sleuths, around Rs1.5 billion has recovered from possessions of more than 500 such corrupt officials. In some cases, the state government has also confiscated the bungalows of the corrupt officials and opened up schools there.
