2 railways officers among 5 held by CBI on bribery charges

New Delhi: The CBI has arrested five people, including two deputy chief material managers of the Indian Railways, in connection with separate cases of alleged bribery, officials said on Friday.

The agency has taken into custody 2000-batch Indian Railway Stores Service officer H Narayanan and 2010-batch officer Atul Sharma, posted as deputy chief material managers in Mumbai, in separate cases, they said.

Narayanan was arrested along with two executives of the Greater Noida-based Anest Iwata Motherson Private Limited -- Samir Dave and Deepak Jain -- for allegedly extending benefits to the company in lieu of huge bribe, the officials said.

'It was alleged that a representative of a Grater Noida (Uttar Pradesh)-based private company was in the habit of regularly bribing senior officers of Western Railway for the favour of awarding tenders to the parties being represented by him,' a spokesperson of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) said in a statement.

Narayanan had demanded illegal gratification from the company through a middleman for awarding tenders to the firm for procurement or supply of material, he added.

In the second case, the agency has arrested Sharma for allegedly seeking bribes from the Jharkhand-based Industrial Forge and Engineering Company through a middleman for awarding tenders, the officials said.

'A trap was laid. The Deputy Chief Material Manager (Electrical) (Narayanan) of Central Railway and Deputy Chief Material Manager (Coaching) (Sharma) and Senior Material Manager (H D Parmar) of Western Railway were apprehended while accepting a bribe of around Rs 70,500,' the CBI spokesperson said.

He said searches were conducted at 12 locations, including in Mumbai, Kolkata, Greater Noida, Jamshedpur, Ahmedabad and Vadodara, at the premises of the accused, which led to the recovery of cash, papers relating to properties, investment and jewellery, besides other incriminating documents and articles.