New Delhi: In a major operation carried out on Tuesday, a police inspector and three journalists were arrested from Noida for taking bribe worth Rs 8 lakh.
The arrested policeman, identified as Manoj Pant, was the station house office (SHO) of Sector 20 police station in Noida. The three journalists have been identified as Sushil Pandit, Raman Thakur and Udit Goyal. All four were caught red-handed as part of ‘Operation Trap’.
Police recovered the bribe amount from the crime scene, along with one factory made pistol, six phones and a Mercedes car.
"A complaint was received from one Pushpendra Chauhan on January 27 regarding extortion money being demanded by Manoj Pant to remove the name of the complainant from an FIR filed against him," said Vaibhav Krishan, SSP, Gautam Buddha Nagar.
Once the allegations made by complainant, a call centre owner, were found to be true, the SSP formed a team and laid trap. Instructed of the police team, the complainant first bargained about the bribe money and fixed it to Rs 8 lakh. At night he went to the SHO’s room to hand over the money.
All the note bundles, in the denomination of Rs2,000, were coated with phenolphthalein powder, which got smeared on the hands of SHO Pant. "While talking the money, phenolphthalein gets transferred to the hands of the bribe taker. And when we pour alkaline compound on the phenolphthalein-smeared hands, they turn pink," said SSP Krishan.
On realising that they were trapped, the accused tried to run away but were nabbed by the police. One accused managed to escape from the spot.
Before conducting the raids, the police team requested the district magistrate to appoint two independent officials from different departments to be part of the raiding team and later become independent witnesses.
Owning to an increase in the number of bribery complaints, a separate team will be formed to investigate cases lodged against call centre owners in the last one year, SSP Krishan said, adding: "All black sheep will be taken to task.”
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