The Tamil Nadu Police on Friday arrested a senior officer of the Enforcement Directorate for allegedly accepting a Rs 20 lakh bribe from an individual in Dindigul, The Indian Express reported.
The accused, identified as Ankit Tiwari, was arrested by the Madurai branch of the state police’s Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption on the Dindigul-Madurai highway shortly after he allegedly received the bribe.
The Tamil Nadu Police intercepted Tiwari and discovered the cash, after it received information about the alleged bribe. The person who reported Tiwari to the police cooperated to arrange the bribe handover, the newspaper reported.
Tiwari and his team intimidated and received bribes from several persons in exchange of dropping charges against them, the police alleged, The News Minute reported.
He had previously served the central agency in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh.
The development comes at a time when the Enforcement Directorate has been carrying out a series of raids and investigating cases against Tamil Nadu ministers and senior state government officials.
On June 14, the central agency had arrested Tamil Nadu Minister V Senthil Balaji in a money laundering case.
Last week, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhgam-led state government had moved the Madras High Court against the Enforcement Directorate summons to 10 district collectors as part of an investigation into alleged irregularities and malpractices in the mining and sale of river sand in Tamil Nadu.
However, this is not the first time that a state police has arrested an official of the central agency on corruption charges in recent weeks. On November 2, the Rajasthan Anti-Corruption Bureau had arrested an Enforcement Directorate official and his associate for allegedly accepting a bribe of Rs 15 lakh.
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