Hyderabad, Dec 12 Telangana’s Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) on Thursday began questioning Nikesh Kumar, Assistant Executive Engineer of the Irrigation Department, who was arrested earlier this month in a case of disproportionate assets case.
Day after a court granted the ACB custody of the tainted official for four days, the sleuths of the anti-graft agency took him into custody from Chanchalguda prison.
He was brought to the ACB office in Nampally, where investigating officers were questioning him.
The ACB officials had found assets valued at Rs 17.73 crore owned by Nikesh Kumar and his family members which are disproportionate to his known sources of income. In one bank locker, they found gold jewellery weighing 1.5 kg.
The market value of his assets, including a villa, flat, plots, agriculture land and gold ornaments together is pegged at over Rs 100 crore.
The official, who joined the job a decade ago, was said to be earning at least Rs 2 lakh a day allegedly through corrupt means. The ACB officials were shocked to find the value of the disproportionate assets.
The questioning by the ACB officials is likely to bring out more facts relating to the sensational case. The agency will also try to find out if Nikesh Kumar was acting as a ‘benami’ of any other person.
Nikesh was earlier trapped by the ACB team in May when he demanded and accepted a bribe of Rs 2 lakh along with three other officials working in the irrigation and revenue department.
A major chunk of Nikesh Kumar’s illegal wealth came allegedly through No Objection Certificates (NOCs) he issued for building permissions through the TG-bPASS portal.
This is said to be the second biggest catch by the ACB after the apprehension of the former director of Insurance Medical Services (IMS) Ch Devika Rani in 2019 and HMDA Director (Town Planning) Shiva Balakrishna earlier this year. While disproportionate assets worth Rs 30 crore were seized from Devika, unregistered properties worth Rs 9 crore were seized from Balakrishna. The value of the seized assets of the two tainted officials was only as per the government record. The market value is estimated to be worth hundreds of crores.
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