Senior IAS officer arrested in bribery case

Senior IAS officer and Principal Secretary (Mines) Ashok Singhvi was today arrested by Rajasthan's Anti Corruption Bureau in an alleged case of graft involving Rs 2.55 crore.

He was detained here last evening after five persons including two senior officers of his department were arrested in connection with the case in Udaipur and Bhilwara yesterday.

"IAS officer Ashok Singhvi was arrested at 3 AM. A search operation was launched at his residence at hospital road in Jaipur last evening and list of seizure is being prepared," IG-ACB Dinesh MN told PTI here.

A team of ACB conducted preliminary interrogation of Singhvi at his residence last night and took him to the ACB office later where he was arrested.

Before his arrest, the ACB conducted three raids in Udaipur and Bhilwara yesterday and claimed to have seized total illicit cash of Rs.3.82 crore. Rs. 2.55 crore (out of the total seizure) was to be delivered allegedly to Singhvi and other officers, according to ACB officials.

The bribe amount of Rs. 2.55 crore was allegedly taken from a Chittorgarh-based mines owner Sher Khan for allowing him to restart operations in his mines, which were closed by the mines department, DG-ACB Navdeep Singh said.

The department had cancelled lease of his six mines and the alleged bribe was taken to facilitate Khan and issue him permission to reopen the mines.

"Khan did not complain about the demand of bribery to ACB and we conducted the operation on the basis of our own information," he said.