Thiruvananthapuram: Authority and anti-corruption (VACB) officials have arrested senior officials of the Kerala Air Authority (KWA) while accepting bribes from contractors.
KWA Public Health Executive Engineer North Division John Koshi was arrested while accepting bribes of Rs 25,000 from the contractor named Manoharan.
The arrest was made by the VACB unit led by DSP Ashok Kumar.
VACB officials said John Koshi demanded bribery from a complainant to give his bill even though the latter secured the beneficial command from the State High Court to pass the bill without delay.
MANOHARAN is a contractor who does work related to replacing pipes and related maintenance work between my chekkalamuk and my societymuk near Srekaryam under the North Division of KWA.
The work is carried out under the mission of the Atal for the scheme of rejuvenation and urban transformation projects (emphat) for 2017-18.
The complainant accused despite successful in completing work, there was a delay of more than three months in passing the bill.
After this, he personally met with an executive engineer to ask the reason for the delay.
But, he was told to pay a bribe of Rs 10,000 because it passed the bill.
When he refused, he met another delay from 16 months because he cleaned his contribution.
Frustrated, Manoharan approached the State High Court with a request.
Even though the court ordered to remove the bill within 15 days, the executive engineer chose to ignore this order, forcing Manoharan to approach the court again.
This time, a portion of the bill – Rs 40 Lakh – cleaned.
When he asked about the remaining contributions, he demanded a bribe of Rs 25,000 again.
After this, Manoharan decided to remind the department of alertness.
He filed his complaint before VACB Intelligence SP K E Baiju, who finally led to John Koshi’s arrest on Tuesday.