Chandigarh, November 9
A senior civil servant belonging to the 1989 batch of the Indian Administrative Service landed in the Punjab Vigilance net on the alleged charges of accepting a bribe of Rs 2 lakh from an industrialist of Ludhiana for facilitating allotment of a vacant plot adjoining to his existing unit.

The civil servant Vijay Kumar Janjua, who is Director-cum-Secretary in the Department of Industries and Commerce, has been charged under Sections 7 and 13(2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act.

The arrest has sent shock waves in the state’s bureaucracy as the arrest was made from the Udyog Bhavan, the headquarters of the Industries Department in Sector 17.

Immediately after his arrest, a team of the Vigilance Bureau led by its Joint Director Rajinder Singh searched the house of Janjua in Phase VII of Mohali. The arrested civil servant was also taken to the hospital for his medical examination. He was then taken to the Punjab Vigilance headquarters, also in Sector 17, for preliminary questioning by a deputy director of the bureau.

Meanwhile Prabhjot Janjua, wife of the arrested civil servant, has alleged that her husband is innocent and has been framed. ”He has fallen victim to a clique that has been resorting to unlawful methods to trap civil servants who refuse to follow its diktats. It is probably the handiwork of a lobby at Ludhiana that has its roots in Bihar. This lobby has been blackmailing people. The Vigilance team has searched my house and nothing incriminating has been found. It has taken some documents, for which I have given them the explanation,” she added.

This is the first ever case in the state in recent years where a serving civil servant belonging to the country’s premier civil service has been nabbed red-handed in his office with the “bribe money”.

“It is part of the state government’s drive to weed out corruption from public life that a senior civil servant has been arrested. There has been no such precedent — of such a senior civil servant being proceeded against after his formal arrest from his own office in the state,” said a spokesman of the Punjab government.

The complainant in the case, T.R. Mishra, a vice-president of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Ludhiana, had been pursuing since 2001 a case for allotment of a vacant plot adjoining to his existing unit located in Focal Point, Ludhiana. There is a provision in the industrial policy that an industrial unit can ask for allotment of an adjoining industrial plot on payment of reserve price.

In this case, the reserve price was Rs 2,000 per square yard. Talking to the Tribune, TR Mishra said that when he approached the officer concerned, he was told that since there was a huge difference in the current market price and the reserve price, adjoining plot might not be allotted to him.

“A deal was reached that I would pay him Rs 5 lakh in two instalments to get the allotment. The first instalment of Rs 2 lakh was to be paid to him. I told him that since I was not in a capacity to pay Rs 2.5 lakh, I would pay Rs 2 lakh in the first instalment and the remaining Rs 3 lakh after the allotment had been made. I took the money after informing the Vigilance Bureau and gave him the money in the presence of a shadow witness, Ram Swarath, and two gazetted Class I officers.” Ravcharan Singh Brar led the vigilance team. The accused took the money and put it in a file cover. Subsequently, he put the file cover containing the money under two other files. Finally, he put the money in his drawer before the Vigilance men pounced on him and recovered the money slithered with invisible phenol pathylene powder. The accused on touching the money gets some invisible powder on his or her hands. On coming in contact with water, the powder turns red.

The vigilance team found nothing incriminating from the house of the arrested civil servant. Sources revealed that neither any Indian currency nor any item of jewellery was recovered from the home.