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 disproportionate assets case.
A day after a court granted the ACB custody of the tainted official for four days, the anti-graft agency’s sleuths took him into custody from Chanchalguda prison. He was brought to the ACB office in Nampally, where investigating officers questioned him.
The ACB officials had found assets valued at ₹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, agricultural land, and gold ornaments, is pegged at over ₹100 crore. The official, who joined the job a decade ago, was said to be earning at least ₹2 lakh a day, allegedly through corrupt means.
The ACB officials were shocked to find the value of the disproportionate assets. Their questioning is likely to reveal more facts about the sensational case.
The agency will also try to find out if Nikesh Kumar was acting as a ‘benami’ of any other person. In May, the ACB team trapped Nikesh when he demanded and accepted a bribe of ₹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), which he issued for building permissions through the TG-bPASS portal.
This is the ACB’s second-biggest catch after the apprehensions 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 Devika was seized with disproportionate assets worth ₹30 crore, Balakrishna was seized with unregistered properties worth ₹9 crore.
The value of the two tainted officials’ seized assets was only as per the government record. The market value is estimated to be hundreds of crores.
–IANS
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