GST officer, Pvt woman employee held for Rs 9k graft

Navi Mumbai: The Navi Mumbai Anti--Corruption Bureau team has arrested a tax officer at the State GST department in Konkan Bhawan building in CBD-Belapur along with a woman, whom he had privately employed at his office, after they were caught red-handed while accepting a bribe of collectively Rs 9,000 from the complainant, a software development processional, for issuing Professional Tax Enrollment Certificate (PTEC) and Processional Tax Registration Certificate (PTRC). The trap was laid at the GST department's office located on the 4th floor on Monday around 6.30 pm. While the woman was caught red-handed while accepting Rs 2,000 bribe from the complainant, the tax officer was caught accepting Rs 7,000 in his office cabin, informed Dharmaraj Sonake, ACB's Dy SP.Dy SP Sonake said, "The arrested accused are the tax officer (Class-2) identified as Amit Giri (45) and his aide Vaishali Kadam (39). On March 10, Giri had emailed to the complainant a digitally signed show cause notice regarding PTEC and PTRC and claimed that the complainant was liable to pay penalty for non-payment of GST and hence the two certificates cannot be issued. The accused Giri had employed Kadam at the govt office, which was also illegal. When the complainant went to Girl's office, he asked him to meet Vaishali Kadam, who verified the document and told the complainant that he would have to pay an amount of Rs 23,900. Out of that Rs 13,900 would be given as a receipt and the remaining Rs. 10,000 would have to be given to Giri for closing his file. The verification of the complaint was done on April 2 in the presence of government witnesses. On April 6, a trap was laid and Giri and Kadam were caught red-handed while accepting the bribe."