An Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer caught by the Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) on Saturday in Kota had amassed disproportionate assets worth crores of rupees, the ACB found during search of his Jaipur house.

ACB director general (DG) Alok Tripathi said they found a locker at the Jaipur house of Sahi Ram Meena containing Rs 2.26 crore, jewellery worth Rs 6.26 lakh and documents of 82 residential plots, a flat in Mumbai, a petrol pump, a wedding garden and five hectare of agriculture land.

Meena, a 1997-batch IRS officer, is posted as the deputy commissioner of Central Bureau of Narcotics (CBN) in Kota.

An ACB team caught him on Saturday while accepting a bribe of Rs 1 lakh from Kamlesh Dhakar of Chittorgarh. He had allegedly demanded the money for making Dhakar the head of opium growers in his (Dhakar’s) village.

Kota ACB additional SP Thakur Chandrasheel, who led the operation, said CBN appoints heads in opium growing villages as the mediator for procurement.

“The heads (mukhiya in CBN parlance) earn money from growers through corrupt practices,” he added.

Meena, 59, demanded Rs 5 lakh from Dhakar to make him the mukhiya of Kanera village in Chittorgarh.

“Meena and Dhakar were on our radar for some time and we had put their phones on surveillance,” an ACB officer said.

ACB DG Tripathi said they will lodge a case of disproportionate assets also against the IRS officer.

ACB seized documents of 15 bank accounts in Meena and his family’s name. Meena, a native of Gangapur City in Sawai Madhopur, nursed political ambitions, the ACB has found.

Documents found from his house show that he was seeking a party ticket from Jhalawarbaran and Tonk-sawai Madhopur Lok Sabha constituencies for 2019 polls.

He had prepared CVS for both the Congress and the BJP, officers involved in the search said.

An officer said Meena was six months away from retirement.

First Published: Jan 28, 2019 15:54 IST