Instances of politicians caught watching porn in the House have been reported in the past, but this time, there’s a case of a Government official getting caught in the act. Such a video was doing the rounds on social media on Thursday showing a Bhopal Municipal Corporation (BMC) official watching porn during an official meeting.
Anil Sharma, in-charge of zone 10 has now been suspended and slapped with a show cause notice. The suspension of the 50-year-old officer was followed by initiation of a departmental inquiry and a ban on carrying mobiles during meetings. Sharma, who has completed nearly two decades of service, said he would try to defend himself while replying to the show cause notice.
According to Bhopal’s Mayor Alok Sharma, it was a meeting to discuss the city’s problems. Sharma told, “People of Bhopal have elected us for the municipality. We keep holding meetings to discuss problems of the city. In one such meeting, a zonal officer of the municipality, Anil Sharma, was watching porn. This is a serious matter. We have suspended the officer.”
As the official meeting dragged on several officials were seen fiddling with their phones, but Anil Sharma was caught on video watching porn in his phone. In his defence, Sharma told that he was just closing a pop-up ad, although the footage suggests the officer seemed to watch the objectionable ad for a long time.
Sharma also claimed that he couldn’t operate a mobile phone properly and was stuck watching what came on the screen. “I was updating myself by checking various groups on my WhatsApp account when a porn video accidentally opened and I could not close it. I hardly watched it for one and a half minutes, not for two, three hours,’’ the officer said.
BMC Commissioner, Tejaswi S Naik, said he had called for recorded Rs evidence’ and prima facie found the officer guilty. He said the officer had skipped the previous meeting.
Only a week ago, women corporators were caught taking selfies and group photographs in another meeting of the corporation.