EX-RAS officer arrested over bribery charges

Jaipur:

A retired officer of the Rajasthan Administrative Service (RAS) was arrested by the anti-corruption bureau (ACB) over bribery charges in Barmer district of Rajasthan, officials said on Saturday.

ACB Director General (DG) B L Soni said the accused, Premaram Parmar, who retired as additional commissioner in the Department of Colonisation in Bikaner on October 30, was under the ACB radar following a complaint that he was taking huge bribes through middlemen on the pretext of allotting canal land to people displaced by Pong Dam project, ex-servicemen, Mahajan field firing range oustees and landless farmers just before retirement.

He was still taking bribes post-retirement, Soni added.

On Friday night, an ACB team caught him taking a bribe of Rs 5 lakh from a middleman, Nazir Khan, at his residence in Barmer, he said.

The ABC team later carried out searches at his houses in Barmer, Jaipur and Jodhpur and recovered Rs 20 lakh in cash, documents of a 36-bigha farmhouse in Jalore, jewellery and expensive liquor, Soni said.

A separate case under the Excise Act was also registered against Parmar, ADG ACB Dinesh M N said.

He said the middleman used to get land allotted in the name of displaced people and it was later sold at high prices. The displaced people were either given petty amounts or barren land, he added.