Lokayukta police arrested a civic official after allegedly catching him red-handed accepting a bribe of ₹5 lakh to issue khatas to flats in an apartment on Friday morning. The arrested have been identified as Nataraj, Revenue Inspector, Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), Mahadevapura Zone, Bengaluru, and Pavan, a private person who collected the bribe money and handed over to Mr. Nataraj.
Manjunath, of Mukunda Developers, Kodigehalli had complained to Lokayukta Police that Nataraj had demanded a bribe of ₹10,000 to issue a khata for each of the 79 flats of Brindavan Apartments, totalling to ₹7.9 Lakh and had demanded an advance of ₹5 Lakh before the work and the rest to be paid after the khatas were issued.
Acting on the complaint, Lokayukta Police laid a trap and arrested Nataraj after the complainant handed over ₹5 Lakh bribe money to a private person Pavan, who in turn handed it over to Nataraj in Mahadevapura zonal office of the civic body.
Following the arrest, Lokayukta Police officials raided the residence in Girinagar of Mr. Nataraj and found 900 grams of gold ornaments, 7 kgs of silver articles, 4 cars, ₹80,000 and documents of a 40X60 site in his wife’s name in Kodigehalli.
The trap and raid comes a day after Karnataka Lokayukta conducted a survey at 45 BBMP offices in the city, on Thursday evening. Lokayukta Justice B. S. Patil himself visited two BBMP offices and found several irregularities.
