ACB arrests former IAS officer Subodh Agarwal in Jaipur in Jal Jeevan Mission tender case

JAIPUR: Former IAS officer Subodh Agarwal was arrested Thursday, ending a 50-day, multi-state Anti Corruption Bureau manhunt in the Jal Jeevan Mission tender case, estimated at Rs 20,000 crore.

ACB director general Govind Gupta said Agarwal was detained in New Delhi and formally arrested in Jaipur for alleged misuse of office. Gupta said the investigation has found a "tightly knit nexus" of private firms and senior Public Health Engineering Department (PHED) officials who allegedly manipulated tenders and documents to secure large contracts.

Investigators allege two firms—Shri Ganpati Tubewell, run by Mahesh Mittal, and Shri Shyam Tubewell, run by Padamchand Jain—forged certificates of IRCON International Ltd and submitted fake work completion documents in multiple PHED tenders. The firms are suspected to have used the documents to secure contracts worth nearly Rs 960 crore.

The probe also alleges Agarwal, then PHED additional chief secretary, and other senior officers introduced a mandatory requirement of site visit certificates for projects above Rs 50 crore, which investigators say violated rules and exposed bidder identities. Officials claim this enabled cartelisation and "tender pooling", pushing premiums to an unusually high 30-40%, later cleared by PHED authorities.

The ACB launched raids on Feb 17 but did not find Agarwal then. Ten accused, including serving and retired senior PHED officials, were arrested in that phase.

Investigators later obtained an arrest warrant against Agarwal and issued a lookout circular.

Nearly 40 ACB teams searched across Rajasthan—Jaipur, Udaipur, Barmer, Jodhpur, Jhalawar, Kota and Nagaur—and extended operations to New Delhi, Chandigarh, and parts of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, including Faridabad, Noida and Meerut. Officials said teams searched locations linked to Agarwal, including New Moti Bagh and Defence Colony in Delhi, and a farmhouse in Sohna, Haryana.

Arrest warrants against 3
A court has issued arrest warrants against three absconding accused in the JJM case — Mukesh Goyal, then superintending engineer; Jitendra Sharma, then executive engineer; and Sanjeev Gupta, a private individual.


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