Hyderabad, April 3 – Telangana's Anti-Corruption Bureau recovered over Rs 24 lakh in cash, gold, and silver ornaments, along with fixed deposits worth Rs 30 lakh during searches at the houses of two officers of the Sub-Registrar's Office, Warangal, an agency statement said on Friday.
The ACB officials conducted a surprise check at the Sub-Registrar Office in Warangal, in the Hanumakonda district, which revealed several irregularities.
The anti-graft agency said in its release that during the searches conducted on Thursday, 20 unauthorized agents/document writers were found present in the office. The ACB officials seized unaccounted cash of Rs 47,450 along with 70 unregistered documents.
Verification of the mobile phones of the document writers revealed several WhatsApp chats between SRO-I Jamalapuram Ramanarsimha Rao and SRO-II Davuluri Anand, indicating PhonePe transactions with document writers amounting to approximately Rs 42,03,125 over the past year, the ACB said.
It was also found that 204 undelivered registered documents were in the possession of the SROs.
Later, simultaneous searches at the residential houses of SRO-I and SRO-II led to the recovery of net cash of Rs 24,61,540, 819.5 grams of gold ornaments, 2.6 kg of silver ornaments, and fixed deposits worth Rs 30.10 lakh at Kapil Chits.
The ACB also found several other irregularities during the surprise check. A detailed report will be submitted to the government for taking necessary action, the agency said.
On April 1, the ACB officials caught K. Ramesh, 48, working as a Junior Assistant at the Office of Osmania University's Administration Building, Pay Bill Section, Hyderabad, when he demanded and accepted a bribe of Rs. 13,000 from the complainant.
According to ACB, he collected the bribe amount for himself and on behalf of Aravind, a Senior Assistant in the Pay Bill Section, as an undue advantage and reward for doing an official favour—specifically, for having already processed the complainant's mother's pension benefit file to submit to higher officers, and to further process her retirement benefits file.