The Gujarat Anti-Corruption Bureau has arrested two-state GST officials and a middleman from Rajkot in a Rs 3.5 lakh bribery case involving clearance of documents of a goods trader, the ACB said on Wednesday.
The Rajkot-based trader recently approached the ACB, alleging that state tax officer (class-2) Vikram Kanara and tax inspector (class-3) Ajay Mehta had stopped his two trucks for the purpose of checking documents when the vehicles were on their way from Rajkot to Bamanbor industrial area to deliver goods.
Though the trader and his business partner showed original bills of the goods, the accused threatened to detain the trucks under the Goods and Services (GST) Act, claiming that both the e-way bill and the goods invoice were fake, the ACB said in a release.
The two accused, through middlemen Mansukh Hirpara, allegedly demanded Rs 8 lakh as a bribe to allow the trucks to move and settle the matter, it said. After some negotiations, the accused duo agreed to take Rs 4 lakh and allowed the trucks to leave.
A day after the incident, Hirpara allegedly took Rs 50,000 from the complainant as the first installment, as directed by the two accused, who were attached to the office of the state GST’s assistant commissioner in Rajkot, the ACB said.
Following instructions from Kanara and Mehta, the middleman started pressuring the complainant to pay the remaining amount of Rs 3.5 lakh at the earliest, it said.
The trader then approached the ACB office in Rajkot and gave a formal complaint, based on which a trap was laid at a commercial complex on Tuesday.
Hirpara was nabbed on the spot while allegedly accepting Rs 3.5 lakh cash, the ACB said, adding that the other two accused were also arrested later.
