Hyderabad, December 17: Rampant corruption of staff at checkposts was exposed once again with the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) sleuths recovering more than Rs 2.25 lakh collected by them at seven checkposts. They had allegedly hired private persons as their agents to collect bribes from truck drivers, ACB officials said.
ACB officials conducted statewide surprise checks on five integrated and two other checkposts across the state on the intervening night of December 16 and 17 and found various irregularities in functioning.
ACB sleuths said integrated checkposts had officials from transport, excise, commercial taxes, agriculture and marketing, mines and geology, civil supplies and forest departments. An integrated checkpost is headed by a deputy commercial taxes officer, according to them.
“During the surprise checks, we found the staff were resorting to various irregularities like inadequate checking of vehicles, evasion of taxes, overloading, misuse of transit permits, employing private persons and unauthorised absence of staff from duty,” an official release said. ACB sleuths recovered more than Rs 2.25 lakh collected by officials directly or by their agents as bribe.
Searches were conducted on integrated checkposts at Bhoraj in Adilabad (Rs19,600 recovered), Saloora in Nizamabad (Rs 35,620), Bheemunivaripalem in Nellore (Rs 40,400), Naraharipet in Chittoor (Rs12,600), Purusotthapuram in Srikakulam (Rs 41,615), checkpost at Kodikonda in Anantapur (Rs19,100) and transport department checkpost at Krishna district (Rs 56,990). “A detailed report will be sent to the government for further action,” the release said.
-Agencies