ACB raids BMC official’s house, finds Rs 20.5 lakh cash

On Saturday, during the house search of one of the two engineers trapped by the Mumbai unit of the Maharashtra Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) for allegedly accepting a bribe, a lot of valuables, cash, gold, car and property document were found which are strongly suspected to be disproportionate to his known sources of income.

The 35-year-old accused Pushkar Meshram’s house in Kopar Khairane was raided. Allegedly after knowing that he has been trapped, his family members switched off their phones and locked the house, expecting it to be raided by the ABC. The ACB had then sealed the two-bedroom apartment on Friday.

A team under the guidance of additional DCP R. R. Bhogale conducted the raid and found Rs 20.50 lakh in cash, 50 watches for men and 22 watches for women of different international brands including Armani, Rado and Apple. A property document of another one bedroom flat in Kopar was found. About 640 gram of gold was found as well during the raid. Meshram owns a Fabia Skoda car. He has been working in the BMC for eight years.

Incidentally, Meshram’s wife, brother, brother-in-law and sister-in-law also work in the BMC. He has been remanded to police custody by an ACB court till February 10.

On Friday, Meshram and his aide Sandeep Rajput (42), an assistant engineer, were trapped and arrested for allegedly accepting a bribe of Rs 10 lakh as first instalment of Rs 41 lakh demanded for not initiating action against a builder’s ongoing construction work.

The complainant is a 61-year-old real estate developer and is carrying out construction projects in a few areas in Santa Cruz area of western suburbs.

An ACB official said that the construction work carried out by him was not illegal but still the BMC officials termed it as illegal and issued a notice against the work and later demanded bribe for not taking action against him.