CBI Traps SCR Engineer Accepting ₹15 Lakh Bribe in ₹7 Crore Bonus Manipulation Racket

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VIJAYAWADA: In a major anti-corruption strike, the Central Bureau of Investigation (#CBI), Anti-Corruption Branch (#ACB), Visakhapatnam, has registered a criminal case and arrested a Senior Section Engineer (#SSE) #Bapiraju attached to the office of CSTE/Projects of South Central Railway along with four private contractor’s representative for demanding and accepting a ₹15 lakh bribe.

The case, registered under Section 61(2) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023, and Sections 7 and 8 of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, involves severe allegations of record manipulation to fraudulently sanction a massive early-completion bonus.

The probe stems from an Automatic Block Signalling project worth ₹179.50 Crore that was awarded in September 2023 to a joint venture comprising M/s Ganapathi Engineering Works and M/s Yella Constructions Private Limited. After completing the project ahead of schedule, the executing firm submitted a bonus claim of approximately ₹7 Crore to the office of the Chief Signal & Telecommunications Engineer (#CSTE) Projects, Vijayawada.

According to CBI findings, key railway officials colluded during an unscheduled weekend session on June 13 and 14, 2026, deliberately altering dates and designating the bonus eligibility period to 140 days to fraudulently clear the payout.

To release the windfall bonus, an illicit cut of approximately ₹1 Crore was allegedly negotiated. Acting on actionable intelligence regarding the cash handover, a CBI trap team intercepted Senior Section Engineer Bapiraju along the Visakhapatnam–Vijayawada highway at Kathipudi on August 16, 2026, catching him red-handed while accepting the initial ₹15 Lakh tranche from Srichand, the son of the construction firm’s Managing Director.

The entire bribe amount was recovered on the spot, followed by coordinated search operations across multiple premises in Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada, Pithapuram, and Hyderabad.

This operation comes amid a heavy, sustained crackdown by the CBI across several railway zones where project milestones and billing approvals have been weaponized for kickbacks. Just days earlier, the agency unmasked a massive pay-to-clear syndicate spanning South Eastern Railway and North Western Railway, booking the Deputy CSTE at Chakradharpur as well as senior divisional accounts and engineering officials across Jaipur and Bikaner for running multi-lakh commission networks with private contractors.

Coupled with the recent arrest and multi-lakh cash recoveries involving the Senior Divisional Mechanical Engineer (Sr. DME) at Bhilai under South East Central Railway, the Vijayawada trap highlights an escalating, multi-zone institutional dragnet targeting entrenched corruption in railway signal & telecommunication engineering and contractor settlements.