JORHAT, June 30 - Sleuths of the Vigilance and Anti-corruption wing of the State police today caught Golaghat Superintendent of the State Excise Department, Jiban Chandra Phukan, red-handed inside his office chamber at Golaghat, when he was allegedly accepting a bribe of Rs 25,000 from the owner of a liquor bar.
An official of the investigating team said they launched an investigation after the bar owner had informed them that the Superintendent had sought the money in lieu of granting an official permission for shifting the bar from its present location at Bongaon in Golaghat district.
�Investigation is going on. Jiban Chandra Phukan was caught red-handed and we recovered Rs 25 thousand from him, which he accepted as bribe for doing his official work,� said an official of the Vigilance and Anti-corruption wing.
With the help of local police, another investigating team of the anti-corruption wing conducted a simultaneous search operation at his three-storeyed mansion at Chandan Nagar of Jorhat town, where they found different kinds of expensive items and documents related to his huge investments in different business and insurance establishments.
As the team did not conclude their search operation till the time of filing of this report, the officials concerned refrained from revealing more about the findings at the mansion.
Sources said that a big mansion in a location like Chandan Nagar in the city and the costly furniture and different expensive items only seem to indicate that the Excise Superintendent�s assets are apparently disproportionate to his legal sources of income.
