YEH MERA INDIA

Lokayukta caught Supt. Of police accepting bribe and H.C grants bail

The High Court granted bail to K P Puttaswamy, Superintendent of police, Kolar district who was trapped by the Lokayukta police while accepting a bribe from a constable for an official favour.
While allowing the bail application of puttaswamy, Justice Hulvadi Ramesh granted bail with regular bail conditions.
However, the Lokayukta objected to the bail being granted to Puttaswamy. The Lokayukta counsel said, "Puttaswamy was terrorising the people of Kolar by accepting bribes. In the matter of corruption, he is a walking ATM and he does not even spare his parents. If bail is granted to such accused, a wrong signal will be sent to the society," the Lokayukta counsel argued.
The Lokayukta stated that Puttaswamy had accepted the bribe from PP Prakash, a police constable for an official favour. A departmental inquiry was pending against Prakash for not attending office regularly. Prakash pleaded that he could not attended to his duties due to his ill-health and sought retirement under Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS). He paid Rs 25,000 bribe to Puttaswamy for granting him VRS, the Lokayukta alleged.
However, a compulsory retirement order was issued to him. Prakash approached Puttaswamy who sought Rs 10,000 more to grant him retirement under VRS.
On November 27, the Lokayukta caught Puttaswamy while accepting Rs 10,000 from Prakash. Further, the Lokayukta seized Rs 76,000 in cash and some gold ornaments from Puttaswamy’s house. In his bail application, Puttaswamy said that he was due for promotion and some of his adversaries had complained against him to the Lokayukta to hold up his promotion. The lower court had, earlier, rejected his bail application.

Crorepati babus behind bars but not jobless
Patna: A staggering 300 Bihar government employees earning modest government salaries- are crorepatis. If this isn’t surprising enough, here’s more: All but two of the sleazy 300 continue to hold on their secure- as also, no doubt, lucrative-government jobs despite long stints in jails.
In 2006, when chief minister Nitish Kumar cracked the whip on graft, 70-odd "trap" cases led to the arrest of 76 employees. This figure shot up to 131 in 2007; while 97 others were caught with their hands in the till 2008.
Of these 365 arrested babus, Vigilance Bureau found 300 of them had assets and other valuables running into crores. In the last four years, chargesheets were submitted against 596 gazetted and 632 non-gazetted public servants apart from 302 others, including those arrested before 2006. With just one vigilance court in Bihar for "trap" cases, only a handful of them have been convicted so far. Worse, the departments concerned have been indifferent about sacking the convicts.
The only two corrupt public servants fired were clerks- one in commercial taxes department and the other in the agriculture department.
"The vigilance bureau has no role in the dismissal of government servants arrested on corruption charge," said ADG (vigilance) Anil Sinha. "Our job is to arrest them, file FIRs, investigate the case, submit chargesheets and put them on trial," he said, adding dismissal has to be ordered by the departments concerned.
Sinha admits trials in such cases haven’t been fast because there is just one court for "trap" cases. "But the pace of trials has increased, with court proceedings taking place daily," he added.
Another senior cop said speedy trial and conviction of such employees would go a long way in discouraging others. The vigilance department, too, feels that dismissals would create a sense of fear among other greedy babus.
Nitish Kumar has emphasised the need for special courts to deal exclusively with trap and disproportionate assets cases. "If I had my way, I’ll have illegal properties amassed by them confiscated and open schools in their palatial buildings," Kumar said.
The state government has already got a Bihar Special Courts Bill, 2009, passed by the state legislature which provides for confiscation of assets of corrupt government servants. But the Bill’s awaiting Centre’s approval.
"It is pending with the Centre since March this year despite reminders from the CM who was even met Union law minister Veerappa Moily in this regard," a senior state official said.

Doctor, what a fall!
Lucknow: A doctor who was allegedly involved in abducting girls and forcing them into prostitution has been arrested in Uttar Pradesh. A teenager who was recently kidnapped by the doctor was also rescued from his hospital, police said. Acting on a tip-off, a police team of Uttar Pradesh’s Kaushambi district, raided a private hospital in Allahabad district. They rescued the 17-year-old girl, who was abducted on November 19 from Kaushambi. "H S Patel, who is an MD, has confessed that he along with his aides abducted her," police told reporters. Patel owns a popular nursing home in Dhoomangani in Allahabad.

MP Govt to tag ‘I am poor’ on BPL houses
The Madhya Pradesh Government plans to write ‘I am poor’ on the walls of houses of people with below poverty line (BPL) cards to discourage the non-deserving families from availing benefits of the scheme, officials said.
An official said, "The department, in case it gets too many complaints of the well-off getting themselves included in the BPL list, would launch a door-to-door drive and write ‘I am poor’ on the walls of the houses of the BPL card holders. This is a last resort to force the non-deserving people to surrender their cards."
Madhya Pradesh Minister of State for Food and Civil Supplies Paras Jain said, "The government has been receiving several complaints that affluent people have managed to get BPL cards and were availing benefits and this was the reason fresh cards are being made.