DVAC fishes out Rs 39K from Agricultural Marketing Board office toilet

CHENNAI: During a crackdown on alleged bribery ahead of Deepavali, sleuths from the Tamil Nadu Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC) fished out currency notes worth over Rs 39,000 from a toilet in the state’s Agricultural Marketing Board office in Guindy on Friday night.

According to sources, when the raid was going on, a group I official had gone to the restroom, where he allegedly tried to dispose of unaccounted cash by flushing it down the toilet. Smelling something fishy, DVAC officials asked him to step out of the restroom and went inside to check and found that he had tried to flush down currency notes.

The DVAC team had to hire external manpower to recover the currency notes from the toilet, sources said.

Sources also noted that one senior official managed to walk out of the office and fled the premises by scaling a wall, leaving his vehicle behind.

A total of Rs 4.73 lakh in unaccounted money was confiscated during the operation that lasted several hours.

The raid was conducted based on a specific complaint that certain officials and staff at the board were demanding and accepting bribes from the people under the guise of "festive gifts."

This operation was part of a larger statewide anti-corruption drive launched by the DVAC on October 15, following numerous complaints that government employees were coercively soliciting bribes from the public, while contractors and businesspersons were offering bribes to officials, often misrepresenting them as Deepavali presents.

During the initial two days of the operation, 37 government offices across Tamil Nadu were searched, leading to the seizure of unaccounted cash totalling Rs 37,74,860.