Goat, sweets, tiffin are codes for bribe money for officials: ACB

JAIPUR: Bribe money is goat, calf, tiffin, stamp paper or some sweets in the parlance of middlemen seeking kickbacks for corrupt officials.
If they get to know that the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) is on the prowl, the signal is “baarish aa rahi hai, ruk jao”. This was revealed by the ACB teams, which are on surveillance duties hearing telephonic conversations after taking due permissions as they are abreast of ever-changing bribe vocabulary to nail the corrupt.
TOI on Thursday spoke to the senior offices of ACB and also those who are on surveillance duty 24x7 in three shifts of 8 hours each in hearing the conversions of suspicious people to lead to further development for raid, trap or searches.
“With the increasing number of raids and traps, the culprits are changing their vocabulary and demands almost everyday. In many cases the officer who is on our radar will never converse directly with his middlemen or the person from whom he is seeking a bribe. We have our methodology to decode his involvement in corruption,” said BL Soni, Director General, ACB. He added that ACB officials keep themselves updated through various discussions and repeated hearing of the recorded telephonic conversations.
“Every doubtful conversation is heard not only by our men on surveillance but also by senior officers. Also, these days the telephonic conversation has also been used against the corrupt officers in court trials as evidence if the conversation has incriminating evidence,” he added. An officer who is close to the telephonic surveillance on the condition of anonymity said that for money, words like bakri (goat), paada (Calf), tiffin, kaju katli, thaal are used as code. “In one of the conversations, a middleman while rejecting the offer of a person giving bribe had said “mithayee ki quality badhao” through which he meant to increase bribe amount,” said officer.