The Odisha Vigilance Directorate said its officials on Sunday evening caught an IAS officer allegedly in the act of accepting a Rs 10-lakh bribe from a businessman in Kalahandi district.
Dhiman Chakma, a 2021-batch officer currently posted as a sub-collector at Dharamgarh in Kalahandi district, has been booked under the Prevention of Corruption Act.
According to Vigilance officials, Chakma allegedly accepted Rs 10 lakh as an instalment of a total demand of Rs 20 lakh from the businessman, who claimed he was threatened with action if he did not pay. The businessman subsequently lodged a complaint with the Vigilance Directorate.
“The accused IAS officer called the complainant to his official government residence at Dharamgarh, received the bribe amount, verified the note bundles of different denominations with both his hands and kept the same inside his residence office table drawer. Both hand wash and table drawer wash gave positive chemical reaction,” said a Vigilance official.
During subsequent searches at his official residence, a further Rs 47 lakh in cash has also been recovered, Vigilance said. Further searches are in progress and will continue till Monday morning, said officials.
Chakma is a native of Kanchanpur in Tripura. After clearing UPSC, the computer science graduate from National Institute of Technology (NIT), Agartala, was posted as an Indian Forest Service (IFS) officer in Odisha’s Mayurbhanj before he made it to the Indian Administrative Service (IAS).
