CBI, MI bust army recruitment racket

Chandigarh, May 4: In a joint operation, the CBI and the Military Intelligence yesterday nabbed a civilian employee of the Ordnance Branch at the Chandimandir based Western Command headquarters while accepting a large amount of money from a prospective candidate for recruitment in an Army Ordnance establishment.

The accused, identified as A K Sondhi, was taken into custody from his Panchkula residence.

An official release of the Western Command today stated that the army authorities had been keeping a tab on Sondhi's activities for the last six months and a laborious and painstaking covert investigation finally led to his nabbing. He was caught red-handed while accepting the bribe from the prospective candidate.

Preliminary searches at Sondhi's residence led to the recovery of huge amount of cash and other liquid assets including FDs and bonds.

Coincidentally, the wife of the individual is also an employee in the same department.

CBI is interrogating Sondhi to establish the extent of the couples involvement in the recruitment racket and other corrupt practices. His main modus operandi was to lure the poor, needy civilian boys with offers of permanent government jobs in various Army Ordnance establishments, for which he used to extract large sums of money from them.

The release said that since CBI was the competent authority to conduct investigations into corrupt practices by government employees, the Army authorities sought their assistance in a bid to identify and root out corruption from within its own ranks. Assets recovered from the residence of Sondhi, during the search indicate to his amassing assets disproportionate to his known sources of income.

UNI