Gen Manager of cooperative depot, aide held by ACB for graft

The anti-corruption bureau (ACB) today arrested the general manager of a cooperative consumer depot (Sahkari Upbhokta Bhandar) for accepting a bribe of Rs 5.70 lakh from a pharmacist.
The ACB also arrested a middle man, who had accepted the bribe on behalf of the general manager, officials said.
It also recovered Rs six lakh from the house of the middle-man during a search operation, which also was taken from another pharmacist as a bribe, they said.
Superintendent of Police (ACB) Ajay Pal Lamba said complainant Rajendra Soni, who works as a pharmacist at a pharma store of the bhandar at the Mahatma Gandhi Hospital, had alleged that the General Manager of the depot, Madhusudan Sharma, had been demanding a bribe of Rs 5.70 lakh for his transfer to another store.

"During verification of the complaint, Sharma took Rs 20,000 from the complainant two days back and agreed to take the balance amount of Rs 5.50 lakh on Monday (today)," Lamba said.
The middle-man, Ashok Parihar, who also is a pharmacist at one of the stores of the bhandar, called the complainant Soni at Jaljog Circle and the moment he accepted Rs 5.50 lakh, the ACB sleuths caught him red handed.

"After arresting Parihar, we also arrested Sharma from his office and initiated a search of the places belonging to both Parihar and Sharma," the SP said.
Lamba said Sharma has been taking a fixed monthly amount from all the pharma stores of the bhandar since a long time.

Complaint against him was also given by some RTI activists during Diwali for granting the contract for crackers shop in violation of the rules.