Chandigarh, February 3
In its continued crackdown on corruption across Punjab, the Punjab Vigilance Bureau (VB) today arrested two employees of the Punjab Waqf Board office in Garhshankar red-handed while accepting a bribe of ₹18,000.
Mohammad Yasin, Rent Collector, and Mohammad Talim, a contract-based Peon, both posted at the Punjab Waqf Board office in Garhshankar, were nabbed during a successful trap operation.
Disclosing details here today, a spokesperson for the Vigilance Bureau said the arrests followed a complaint lodged by a resident of Balachaur in Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar district.
The complainant, an agriculturist, had leased 10 kanals of Waqf Board land in village Bhaddi, Tehsil Balachaur, for the period 2018–2021. After the lease expired in 2021, he approached Rent Collector Mohammad Yasin at the Garhshankar office to renew the lease.
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The accused allegedly demanded a bribe of ₹50,000 to process the renewal file. When the complainant said he could not afford that amount, the demand was negotiated down to ₹20,000. Of this, ₹2,000 was taken immediately by Mohammad Yasin, and the complainant was instructed to pay the remaining ₹18,000 later. The entire conversation was secretly recorded by the complainant.
Following a preliminary verification of the complaint, a Vigilance Bureau team from SBS Nagar laid a trap. Both accused were caught red-handed accepting the bribe amount of ₹18,000 from the complainant in the presence of two independent official witnesses.
A case under the Prevention of Corruption Act has been registered against the accused at Vigilance Bureau Police Station, Jalandhar. Further investigation is underway.
