CIAA team arrests cooperative officer

Siraha, July 26

A team deployed from Itahari-based Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority Office arrested a staffer of Cooperative Division Office, Lahan, with the bribe amount from the office in Siraha today.

The anti-graft government body has taken an assistant cooperative inspector Subash Gadtaula of cooperative division office under control while he was taking Rs 15,000 bribe from service seeker Pratima Yadav at Rajbiraj Municipality in the office today.

Yadav reached the office to register the cooperative. Speaker Ramesh Basnet at CIAA, who was also in the team, said that the team acting on a tip-off had caught Gadtaula red- handed along with the bribe amount. Basnet said that they have been preparing to take Gadtaula to Itahari-based office for further investigation.

Meanwhile, Yadav said that she could not register the cooperative even though she had gone to the office many times. “The officer troubled me on one pretext or the other for one month,” she added. Yadav further said she get the job done after she offered Rs 15,000 to Gadtaula today. She said that Gadtaula had pressured her saying that he could not work if she brought even one rupee less.

Yadav said that even the office chief Ram Prasad Subedi did not listen to her when she asked why her cooperative was not registered. “Subedi asked me to consult Gadtaula for details when I asked him the cause of the delay,” she informed. Meanwhile, Subedi said that he did not have any information regarding the bribe. “I did not tell her to bring the money, but I asked her to manage some documents,” he said.