District Magistrates in vigilance net

Patna, Oct 14 (UNI) With the arrest of Mr Hemchandra Jha, three District Magistrates have so far been caught in the vigilance net for commmitting financial irregularities in recent times.

The District Magistrates who are facing charges of squandering public funds include former District Magistrates of Patna and Katihar - Gautam Goswami and Lakshmi Kant.

Mr Jha has been booked by the state vigilance investigation bureau for allegedly accepting grafts from some officials in Madhepura district while Mr Goswami, now languishing in Beur jail, has been chargesheeted for siphoning off flood relief funds. Earlier, Mr Lakshmi Kant had also been chargsheeted for embezzlement of various educational scheme funds.

''Mr Jha was arrested last night by the sleuths of state vigilance bureau, and now was being taken for interrogation and is likely to be produced before the court today evening,'' said additional DGP(vigilance) Nilmani, adding ''at the time of his arrest, an amount of Rs 1,90,200 was recovered from his possession and he failed to give any plausible explanation about the huge cash.'' The Vigilance also raided Mr Jha's house in the state capital and his official residence in Madhepura. The District Magistrate is also facing a complaint case filed against him in the court of Chief Judicial Magistrate, Madhepura by Madhepura NCP district president Angad Yadav for committing financial irregularities in the purchase of medicines for various health related schemes.

Apart from Mr Jha, the Vigilance had also arrested assistant labour commissioner Sant Lal Choudhry in Bettiah of West Champaran district for accepting a bribe of Rs 5000.

Prior to the arrest of the three DMs, the Vigilance had booked a District Development Commissioner of Supaul for taking bribe of Rs 35,000.

Notably, Bihar tops the chart for corruption charges after the CBI in 1997 arrested many senior IAS officers in connection with the multi crore rupee fodder scam and the present arrests simply adds up to that tally.

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