By IANS
Patna : The Bihar government has decided to conduct speedy trials of cases against government officials arrested on bribery charges and has set up a special court to deal with such cases.
Assistant director general of the state vigilance bureau, Neelmani, said: “The special court will start speedy trials of all the charge-sheeted cases.”
“The vigilance department has arrested 109 government officials on bribery charges till September 2007 and 68 in 2006 as part of the anti-corruption drive,” he said.
Neelmani said the vigilance department has filed charge sheets against 60 of the 68 government officials arrested in 2006 and 76 of the 109 officials arrested in 2007.
Last year, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had ordered a special drive against corruption.
As part of the drive, the state vigilance department arrested Hemchandra Jha, district magistrate of Madhepura, last year on charges of accepting Rs.190,000 as bribe.
A few months ago, over nine kilograms of gold, including a one-kilogram gold brick, 800 gold coins, and more than one kilogram of silver were seized from the bank locker of an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer here.
Special Vigilance Unit (SVU) officials, who made the seizure from the locker of S.S. Verma, had raided his residence in June for allegedly amassing assets more than his known sources of income. The SVU had already alleged that his assets totalled Rs.6.8 million.
SVU officials recovered gold worth Rs.7.2 million from one of the two bank lockers of Verma here, official sources said Friday. Cash worth Rs.258,000 was also recovered, they added.
In the earlier raids at the IAS officer’s residence, police had recovered Rs.1.65 million in cash, gold jewellery worth over Rs.350,000, $1500 in US currency and a number of documents indicating Verma’s involvement in various stock market and property deals.
In February, the SVU had raided the residence of senior Indian Police Service (IPS) officer Narayan Mishra. Police have filed a report against Mishra, who was the police chief when Rabri Devi was the chief minister. He retired last week.