₹60 crore bribery: CBI books seven railway officials, and a private firm Bhartia Infra Projects Ltd.

The matter came to light after the CBI arrested Santosh Kumar, #SSE/Silchar/#NFRailway, in a ₹2 crore bribery case following searches at his premises

New Delhi, 23 Jan (PTI): The Central Bureau of Investigation (#CBI) has booked seven railway employees and a private company, Bhartia Infra Projects Ltd., in a ₹60 crore bribery case related to projects in the North East Frontier Railway (#NFR) during 2016-23, officials said Tuesday.

The matter came to light after the #CBI arrested #SantoshKumar, Senior Section Engineer of the North East Frontier Railway, Silchar, in a ₹2 crore #bribery case following searches at his premises, they said.

The material gathered during the searches revealed that #BhartiaInfraProjects Ltd. allegedly paid #bribes worth more than ₹60 crore to #Railway officials, according to CBI officials.

During the searches, the CBI also found a list of names of officials associated with the company’s projects, who allegedly received bribes in cash as well as in bank accounts of their relatives and family members between 2016 and 2023, they said.

The private firm got six major #projects from North East Frontier Railway during 2016-22, which included the #construction of a station yard, protection of tunnel portals, and construction of a single line tunnel, #RCC retaining wall and foundation of a major bridge on the #Barak river, according to the officials.

In the FIR (No. RC2172023A0011, dtd. 24.07.2023) the CBI has named as accused the then deputy chief engineer, construction, Rampal; the then deputy chief engineer AXENs Jitendra Jha and B. U. Laskar; and the then senior section engineers Rituraj Gogoi, Dhiraj Bhagawat, Manoj Saikia and Mithun Das, besides the private firm Bhartia Infra Projects Ltd., the officials said.